Still released under the Virgin Records umbrella, Mike Paradinas' fourth album as µ-Ziq is the wildest, most humorous, and most eccentric thing that happened to Jungle at the end of its heyday. But we already told you that right here. When I unexpectedly found the album in a record store in Edinburgh in 1997, I didn't know what the hell was going on. For a long time, Mike Paradinas was a bit embarrassed by the album because he thought it to be a poor imitation of Squarepusher's “Feed Me Weird Things.” Far from it. Even today, “Lunatic Harness” is unique and contains all the madness and beauty you would expect from the title.

It all started with Jega, literally. Mike Paradinas once said he started Planet µ because of him. Jega`s first two EPs in 1996 and 1997 on Skam Records had already taken Jungle, Breakbeat, and Electro to new heights. That's why the “Type Xer0 EP” is doubly essential. As ZIQ001, it is the first release on the indie label Planet µ, which had just escaped from solitary confinement. For Breakcore, the track “Pitbull” is exactly what it promises to be, before Breakcore became a genre and started filling an entire crate of Planet µ catalogue numbers. And “Carbon 60” still invites you on the deepest intergalactic star cruises through electromagnetic fields.

When you say Breakcore, you have to dance Venetian Snares' name. Even if the brutally precise and consistent 7/8 rhythms quickly make your toes crack. “Rossz Csillag Allat Született” is particularly special in the Canadian’s oeuvre. Not only did he expand Breakcore into symphonic territory with Béla Bartók influences. The album already clarified in 2005 what most current neoclassical music (to which the album can of course only be counted with sustained fits of laughter) lacks: vision and courage.

While everyone was looking to East London for Grime, which exploded into everyday culture in 2005, Mike Paradinas secretly snuck off to Manchester and brought the gritty working-class vibe of northern England into the spotlight. It was produced by Mark One, the Mancunian who had already turned heads on the “Grime” compilations on Rephlex Records – and also released two great solo albums on Planet µ. His fresh halfstep beats, which morph from track to track, and the soundtrack-like horror sounds form the perfect canvas for a merciless portrait of an extremely fucked-up adolescence in northern England.

Planet µ not only introduced Dubstep to a new audience outside London's mini-scene with three excellently curated compilations by BBC presenter Mary Ann Hobbs. The label was also its restless, probing spearhead for years to come. Over the past 20 years, the label has released more new, exciting morphisms of the genre, which has long been annexed by the pop circus, than all the classic Dubstep labels combined. “Cloud Seed” by Vex’d is therefore exemplary in this regard – shoulder to shoulder with his peers Boxcutter, Pinch, Ital Tek, Starkey, Milanese, Benga, and, more recently, Slikback. The album is a darkly dazzling jewel, raw, atmospheric, dystopian, constantly changing dimensions and – in a strangely morbid way – romantic.

Amidst all the beat-heavy crater landscapes on Planet µ, even label boss Paradinas sometimes needs to take a deep breath and immerse himself in futuristically distorted memories of an easier youth. In these memories, synthesizers form wisps of fog, neon tubes glow in an otherworldly pink, and disembodied dream voices beguile the listener. Here, there is room for glamour, pathos, and coked-up madness. Alongside Miracle, Polysick, and Kuedo, Ital built these regular retreats on Planet µ. But Rudi Zygadlo took it to the max. His debut swirls somewhere between Daft Punk, 70s Glam Rock, Synth Pop, the New New Wave of PVT, and bass music on a slot machine. What a ride.

Zíur is the new era on Planet µ. Genre classifications are so Generation X, you know?!. “U Feel Anything?” stomps, hums, screeches with maximum eclecticism. Everything flies into a pot, is distilled, sieved, thickened, refined by molecular cooking, and served with glistening lights. Somewhere between Arca excess and Prettybwoy brutalism, cutting noise and buttery synth patches, emotional collapse and hedonistic neon glitter, “U Feel Anything?” spreads its wings for all the lost souls of these restless times.

Antwood also throws everything into a wild mix, yet somehow creates something insanely coherent in all its strangeness. His third album for Planet µ charges in microsecond-leaps through 1990s Wipe-Out frenzy and bubblegum Techno, experimental bass massages and pompous piano emotions, kitsch and noise, euphoric MDMA patches and K-Hole dissociation. And alongside all of this he – and his partner Olivia Dreisinger – manage to tell an epic story about love in a digitized world, without loosing a word.

Lara Rix-Martin has not only produced sugar-sweet love-electronics with label boss and husband Mike Paradinas as the programmatic duo Heterotic. Since 2016, she has been giving marginalized genders an outlet on the sublabel Objects Limited. As Meemo Comma, she explores spirituality, myths, and absurd science fiction, sometimes raving, sometimes ambient, sometimes experimental. Her third album, “Neon Genesis: Soul Into Matter2”, is an imaginary soundtrack and a strangely beguiling time-travel tale that immerses itself in offset classical music as well as breakbeats, vocal experiments, sleep-drifting Techno, and all sorts of mental states following holotropic breathing sessions.

In 2010, everyone was still going crazy over Dubstep, but Mike Paradinas had already discovered the next step in beat evolution. Planet µ was one of the few European labels (and probably the first) to celebrate the Chicago microgenre Footwork from the outset. DJ Nate appeared in 2010, followed shortly afterwards by the veterans Traxman, DJ Rashad, and RP Boo. And even before Europe understood what was going on, Young Smoke and Jlin redefined the genre in their own unique ways. Jlin is still going strong today, constantly reinventing hyperventilating rhythms, throwing xylophones, glockenspiels, and violins between the wildly breaking legs, while still making you rave amidst all the experimentation and noise.