Bowery Electric were an American band formed in 1994 in New York by Lawrence Chandler and Martha Schwendener. Their debut EP Drop was released in 1994. Bowery Electric followed in 1995 and is in Pitchfork’s “The 50 Best Shoegaze Albums of All Time” and Gimme Indie Rock: 500 Essential American Underground Rock Albums 1981–1996. Beat was released in 1996. Melody Maker raved “Good God, THIS IS IT. My Bloody Valentine can f*** right off, they’ve been beaten to it. There’s gonna be an awful lot of no-clues incorporating hip hop into their sound . . . we can all look back to this LP, which surpassed them all without even giving them a chance”. The Wire praised the album as “genre-defining” concluding “Beat is a benchmark album”. Reflecting on the 20th Anniversary Edition The Wire wrote “This music hasn’t aged a bit. The ideas it proposes have no traceable descendants. Beat remains an unexplored road to a wondrous promontory only Bowery Electric have ever reached”. Vertigo, a remix album of tracks from Beat, was released in 1997. Blowup, a drum and bass 12", was released in late 1997, debuted at number one on the NME Vibe of the Week chart and featured the band on the cover of the section. Lushlife was released in late 1999. The Austin Chronicle called Lushlife “a morphine drip of an album”. Billboard named the album a Critic’s Choice. The album peaked at No. 14 on the CMJ Top 200 chart. Lushlife was reissued as a 20th Anniversary Edition in 2019.