1990 turned out to be the breakthrough year. Not only did the band finally abbreviate its name to its final form - No-Man - but Steven, Tim and Ben finally worked their influences into an effective new shape.

With greater inspiration now being drawn from hip-hop and dub artists (such as Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest and King Tubby) and, indirectly, from the growth of dance-based British pop movements such as the "Madchester" of 808 State and Happy Mondays), No-Man incorporated dance loops and impetus to their art-pop songs. By April, these ingredients had made it into the live set.

The first released result of the new approach was 1990's 'Colours' single, which arrived in the summer. A violin-and-beat-soaked crooner cover of a Donovan song, with a dubby bass groove atmosphere, it anticipated the birth of trip-hop, arriving nine months before Massive Attack's 'Unfinished Sympathy'. Its inspiration was typically perverse - Happy Mondays had announced their own intention to cover the song, and No-Man (longtime Donovan fans) had decided to beat them to it.

The single was picked up by Probe Plus Records and had an immediate press impact (Single Of The Week in both 'Melody Maker' and 'Sounds'). These were the beginnings of a stream of almost impossibly good reviews which No-Man would gain over the next few years.

The everyday reality for the band was more straightforward - playing concerts up and down the country, adapting their stock of ambient ballads to the new dance-beat style while maintaining the integrity of the original work.

However, 'Colours' had also gained No-Man the attention of record-label-of-the-moment One Little Indian Records (home of Bjork and The Shamen), who signed the band on the strength of the single.

Less spectacularly = but just as importantly - the band signed a deal with the similarly well-eastablished Hit & Run Publishing (part of the company's initiative of signing new bands which, on that occasion, also swept up retro-Raj Britpoppers Kula Shaker, the Liverpudlian pop experimentalists Space and the inimitable Right Said Fred).

The stage was set for No-Man to break through to the next level.

No-Man continued to gig during 1991, with their unlikely support acts including the Brand New Heavies and a then-unknown Tori Amos.

Under pressure from their new record company to think of themselves as a live act, No-Man briefly became a quartet with the addition of drummer Kevin van Doort (an arrangement that lasted for a single concert).

The band followed up 'Colours' in July with the majestic and romantic 'Days In The Trees' single. This gathered another raft of Single Of The Week nominations (in 'Melody Maker', 'Sounds' and 'Teletext') and is still remembered as one of the great "should-have-been-hits" of the '90s.

A third single - 'Heartcheat Pop' - was scheduled but never released. Instead, the band cherry-picked the best tracks from the abandoned single and its two predecessors and released the results as the mini-album 'Lovesighs - An Entertainment' in April.

Further press acclaim followed, with the consensus being that No-Man's moodily literate and danceable pop bridged the gap between such disparate acts as The Associates, Roxy Music, Chic, David Sylvian, The Blue Nile, King Crimson and the Native Tongues posse.

'Lovesighs' was trailed by a further single - 'Ocean Song' - in September. This was No-Man's third attempt at making Donovan danceable. Earlier in the year, they'd taken his musing, mythological Turquoise and set it to gurgling dance electronica and gypsy violin. With new lyrics by Tim, Ocean Song rewrote Turquoise as another moment of ruined passion.

Unfortunately, the new single failed to reach the heights of its predecessor and was ignored. One of its b-sides, the brief Reichian instrumental Back To The Burning Shed, maintained an old in-joke from the No-Man circle but would go on to lend its name to first the band's internet forum and subsequently to the record label Tim would set up a decade later. The other b-side, Swirl, was a more successful take on the rocking efforts of 'Swagger'. With its epic scale and extended length, and its coda of scalding noise and dialogue samples, it was a nod backwards to the days of No Man Is An Island.

This period was also notable for featuring the band's first collaboration with Steve Jansen, Richard Barbieri and Mick Karn. The former Japan/Rain Tree Crow players were headhunted by Tim and Steven in order to complete the No-Man live band that they thought would do justice to their music. Jansen, Barbieri and Karn joined the core No-Man trio in autumn 1992 for No-Man's first full-scale British tour.

Although this dream-ticket six-piece band was short-lived (lasting no longer than the tour itself and, more permanently, several decisive studio sessions), it cemented an association which continues to this day. Among other things, it laid the ground for the Richard Barbieri/Tim Bowness duo album 'Flame' and for Richard's recruitment into Porcupine Tree the following year.

In 1993, No-Man began to release items via their own mail-order service, Hidden Art, in parallel with the One Little Indian releases. One of these was a cassette recording of the BBC 'Hit The North' radio session, featuring the 1992 touring band cruising their way through five tracks including Days In The Trees, new track Taking It Like A Man and a sepulchural re-reading of Ocean Song - stripped entirely of its pop flutter and now sporting a contorted alien-funk Karn bassline.

The same bassline formed the core of the title track of the 'Sweetheart Raw' EP, the first evidence of the No-Man/JBK studio sessions. A bleak semi-spoken tale of a life warped by a single terrible mistake, the song spearheaded a much darker EP (the B-sides resurrected a tense early No-Man song called Bleed and shackled it to a raging industrial dance barrage). Nominally released on One Little Indian, the EP was actually distributed by Hidden Art, possibly hinting at the disagreements to follow between band and label.

However, no such problems were in evidence when the obsessive disco throb of the 'Only Baby' single shimmered into view in March - a pulsating catalogue of love's unreasonable demands, it balanced Steven's funk guitar licks and airy synths with Ben's masterful Hendrix-ian squall on electric violin. Described by an intrigued 'Smash Hits' as "extra fruity with a hint of vavoom!", it hit number 20 in the indie charts.

'Only Baby' paved the way for No-Man's debut album, 'Loveblows And Lovecries - A Confession' which arrived in May. Building on the ground broken by 'Lovesighs', it inspired similar rapturous reviews for its blend of lush pop romanticism, compulsive grooves and avant-garde textures, with 'Lime Lizard' declaring "This is too perfect to be true... this record deserves blind devotion." To promote the album, No-Man toured in May - supporting Ultravox - with Chris Maitland now installed on drums and Silas Maitland (no relation) on bass.

Disagreements over No-Man's future direction were now beginning to develop between band and label. The 'Painting Paradise' single, released in June, showed a sharp division of content. On one side there was the Pet Shop Boys-styled pop of the title track (a butchered reworking of one of the band's favourite tracks from 'Loveblows'). On the other, there was the twenty-one minute luscious trance groove of Heaven Taste (another team-up with Jansen, Barbieri and Karn).

Following the mainstream success of the Shamen, One Little Indian seemed to see No-Man's own chances of success as lying entirely in hi-energy dance pop. For their part, the band had felt pressured into recording the single. Although the finished results briefly hit number 22 in the indie charts, No-Man absolutely loathed their new A-side, while feeling far more inspired by the ambition of Heaven Taste. Cracks were starting to show...

Clues to No-Man's future lay in their past - a few months earlier, in April, the band had released another cassette via Hidden Art. 'Speak: 1988-89' compiled much of the best of the band's early studio work during its first few years of existence. Most of this was the ambient material predating No-Man's live career - detailed, dreamy and textural, with rock and dance beats notable by their absence. This wouldn't be the last time that those recordings resurfaced, but for now they were a fan-club secret.

Opting to fight their battles via strategy rather than tantrums, No-Man refused to return to expensive commercial recording studios to make the follow-up to 'Loveblows'. Instead, they returned home (using their advance to kit out No-Man's Land with upgraded equipment) and hoarded the remaining budget in order to hire guest players to expand their sound. Having spent several years constrained by the demands of live playing and the pop market, they wanted to try something different.

One of the casualties of this approach was Ben Coleman. While he contributed little to composing band material, he was at least as strong a personality as either Steven or Tim; and his relationship with them had often been fiery. His fluid and expressive violin playing was a powerful band asset in itself, but also demanded a string part or solo in every song. When Tim and Steven opted to broaden and vary No-Man's sound, this balance was upset. Inevitably, Ben was sidelined and resented it. Although he made some excellent contributions to the new recording sessions, he opted to leave No-Man during the autumn.

Another autumn development was Steven's first concert as Porcupine Tree. Having worked on the project in parallel with No-Man, he'd just expanded it from a solo studio effort to a live band by adding his old schoolfriend Colin Edwin and two players from various No-Man live bands - Richard Barbieri and Chris Maitland. Initially intended to test the waters and to please Porcupine Tree's small underground audience, the gigs were far more successful than Steven had anticipated...