The keyboardist and self-described ‘sample jockey’ helped give EMF their strange, wired collision of guitars, rave culture and pop.
There was a brief and brilliant period at the turn of the ’90s when British guitar music started sounding like it had spent the entire weekend at a rave.
EMF were right there in the middle of it. Guitars were loud, samples could come from basically anywhere, and the line between an indie band and something you might hear at 3am was getting increasingly blurry.
Derran “Derry” Brownson, the founding EMF member whose keyboards and samples were a huge part of that sound, has died aged 55.
Brownson died on August 13 following treatment for a cancerous brain tumour.
He had undergone surgery after his diagnosis and, remarkably, returned to perform with EMF during his illness, playing his final show with the band in Frome in May.
EMF announced the news on social media, describing Brownson as their “Brother In Arms”.
“We are devastated,” the band wrote, adding that they were grateful Brownson had been able to join them on stage again only months earlier.
“Nothing will ever be the same again without our band mate and friend.”
Brownson co-founded EMF in Cinderford, Gloucestershire, in 1989, alongside James Atkin, Mark Decloedt, Zac Foley and Gareth “DJ Milf” Milford, with guitarist Ian Dench joining shortly afterwards.
Two years later, they were suddenly one of the biggest British bands in America.
Their debut single, ‘Unbelievable’, arrived in 1990 sounding like very little else on mainstream radio: distorted guitar, an enormous beat, keyboard hooks and samples, including Andrew Dice Clay’s instantly recognisable interjections, all thrown together with the logic of a club record.
It reached number three in the UK before doing something even more unlikely, hitting number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 on July 20, 1991.
Brownson’s role in that sound is worth remembering. While he’s commonly described as EMF’s keyboardist, even the band thought that description was a little too conventional.
Speaking around the release of Schubert Dip, Ian Dench said Brownson preferred being thought of as a “sample jockey” the person responsible for the noises, fragments and electronic details that was integral to the EMF sound.
Brownson skill was assembling in real time from whatever the early ’90s threw at them.
That approach ran through 1991 debut Schubert Dip, which also gave the band ‘I Believe’, ‘Children’ and ‘Lies’.
The album reached number three in the UK and spent 19 weeks on the chart.
‘Lies’ also demonstrated just how far EMF were willing to push sampling.
Early copies featured the voice of Mark David Chapman reciting lines from John Lennon’s ‘Watching the Wheels’; the sample was removed from later pressings after Yoko Ono objected.
EMF followed Schubert Dip with Stigma in 1992 and Cha Cha Cha in 1995 before going on hiatus.
Multiple reunions followed, eventually leading to a proper return with Go Go Sapiens in 2022 and The Beauty and the Chaos in 2024.
For a band forever attached to one enormous song, EMF’s influence runs deeper than ‘Unbelievable’.
They belonged to that moment when bands like Pop Will Eat Itself and Jesus Jones were pulling club culture, sampling and electronics into British guitar music, while acid house and Madchester were blowing up what a “rock band” was supposed to sound like.
Brownson was integral to the scene.
And more than three decades later, his samples still sound unbelievable.
