Download was created by Key and Goettel as a Skinny Puppy side project in 1995. Other members included Anthony Valic, Ken Marshall, Phil Western, and Mark Spybey from Dead Voices on Air. Download was named after the closing track off Last Rights and sought to create music by way of " fragments of sound and collages". Key told Terrorizer magazine that he thought of Goettel as "an unrecognized pioneer" of electronic music and, following Goettel's death, used Download as a means of keeping his spirit alive.
Download released their first album, Furnace, in 1995. The album was dedicated to Goettel's memory and featured contributions from Genesis P-Orridge. They followed up their debut with two EPs in 1996, Microscopic and Sidewinder. The band released their second full length effort, The Eyes of Stanley Pain, through Nettwerk Records. Key would use live performances to play "Download versions" of songs from old projects like Skinny Puppy. He said, "we don't sing Ogre's lyrics. We do instrumental versions of key segments of some of the older material". Charlie's Family, produced by the band as the soundtrack for Jim Van Bebber's film of the same name, was given a limited release before the film's completion. Van Bebber, who had done video work for Skinny Puppy, approached Key to write music for the film; Key's goal in making the soundtrack was to create something that was "uneasy, unsettling, just plain old uncomfortable". The album III was released on October 21, 1997, and acted as a companion piece to The Eyes of Stanley Pain. With III, Key began to tone down the industrial aspects of his style for a more electronica sound.
Following the end of Skinny puppy in 1995, Key formed PlaTEAU with Western and Valic. PlatEAU, which signed to Cleopatra subsidiary Hypnotic, released their first album, Music for Grass Bars, on May 20, 1997. The band's follow up, 1999's SpacEcake, was described by Exclaim!'s Matt Mernagh as being more akin to Aphex Twin and Autechre than any of Key's previous work. 2007 saw the release of Kushbush + Music for Grass Bars, the first disc of which contained new music while the second disc featured a special edition of Music for Grass Bars.