Now Is Early

Now Is Early is Shut Up and Dance producing a voice with no precedent, hardcore breakbeat under a vocal that Björk and Massive Attack both came looking for. Nicolette made something genuinely singular here, an album that sits between the rave underground and the avant-garde and belongs fully to neither. It ranks at a hundred and thirty-six because it's an oddity rather than a canonical statement, but the oddity is unlike anything else from the era, and its influence ran further than its sales.