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ZAC FOLEY, who has died aged 31, was bass guitarist with the band EMF, whose biggest splash was the catchy dance hit Unbelievable (1990), still a favourite at wedding discotheques.

The name EMF supposedly stood for Epsom Mad Funkers. Alternative suggestions involved obscene phrases beginning with Ecstasy Mind (or Mother). Parlophone Records countered by claiming it stood for Every Mother's Favourites.

Wearing baseball caps and skateboard shorts, EMF emerged unheralded from the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire and immediately gained an enthusiastic following among devotees of the "Madchester" indie dance music scene.

Their raucous blend of pop, rap, rock and dance was brash, exciting and unpredictable. They had a knack for writing songs that lodged like catchphrases, as in the chorus: The things, you say/Your purple prose just gives you away/ The things you say/You're unbur-lee-vable.

Unbelievable - on which Foley's booming bassline was a notable feature - went to No 3 in Britain, and to No 1 in America the next year. EMF's debut album Schubert Dip (1991) sold two million copies.

"If ever I'm short of a chord sequence," said Ian Dench, the band's likable guitarist and chief songwriter, "I nick one from Schubert." The album ran into controversy when Yoko Ono objected to the use of a sample of the voice of John Lennon's killer Mark Chapman on the track Lies.

One of three children, Zachary Sebastian Rex James Foley was born in the Forest of Dean on December 9 1970. His father was a painter, his mother a practitioner of alternative medicine. Thrown out of school at 16 for having long hair, he gravitated towards the local indie music scene.

He played for the IUCs before joining EMF on its formation in 1989. After finding a Casio sampler and sequencer in a local charity shop, they added a light techno element to their rock-orientated sound, and within a year Unbelievable had conquered the British charts.

Young, lively, fashionable and good-looking, EMF seemed almost too perfect, and when they first appeared, unfounded rumours spread that they had been manufactured by a sharp-eyed Svengali as a rebellious version of New Kids on the Block.

Unbelievable was followed by the successful singles I Believe - seen by some as a straight rewrite - Children, and Lies, but EMF's subsequent albums did not fare so well. Stigma (1992) sold just 37,000 copies and Cha Cha Cha (1995) was panned by a fan on EMF's website as "unbelievably average".

They returned to the singles charts when they teamed up with comedians Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer on a cover of the Monkees' I'm a Believer, but after being dropped by Parlophone they split up. Foley formed the band Carrie, with whom he played until EMF reformed last year.

Apart from his basslines, Foley was known for his party trick of putting what some claimed was a grapefruit, and others a lime, under his foreskin, and for partying. He was no stranger to drugs. "At the time of Stigma," he said, "I was pumping myself full of anything."

Unbelievable was widely covered, and is still often used for television and film trailers.