Born in 1957 in the windswept landscapes and limestone plateau of Tideswell, Derbyshire, Nigel Ayers began his creative journey in the late 70s with his first band The Pump. After relocating to London, he founded Sterile Records with his friend Caroline K. The label became a platform for unorthodox audio experiments, political expression, and independent releases, issuing seminal works by artists such as John Balance (Coil), Maurizio Bianchi, and Lustmord. Nocturnal Emissions was formed shortly after, in 1980, along with Caroline K., and Nigel’s brother, Danny Ayers. Together they developed a project that blended the disruptive energy of punk, critiques of the information society, sound art, and the emerging aesthetics of industrial music.
Though often associated with industrial music, Nocturnal Emissions has never fit neatly into any genre. Instead, the project has remained in constant flux, guided more by philosophical inquiry and broad musical experimentation, aiming to provoke personal transformation through sound.

Nocturnal Emissions has undergone three notable phases since its beginning. The first phase, what Ayers calls the "post-industrial" phase, from 1981 to 1984 was characterized by harsh, often abstract sonic collages, using voice samples, non-musical sounds, and circuit-bent electronics to create confrontational and raw works. From 1983 to 1985, Nocturnal Emissions entered its so-called "funky period", in which the raw experimentation of earlier work was tempered by danceable rhythms without compromising its abrasive edge.

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From the late 1980s, at the height of Nocturnal Emissions' underground influence, Nigel Ayers left London’s squats and returned to rural Derbyshire. Rejecting what he saw as the commodification of the underground, he recommitted to art as a kind of secret alchemy. This shift marked the beginning of the project’s « Neotantric » phase, focused on creating what Ayers described as « a new form of music » that restored sound’s magical and transformative role. His work during this period drew increasingly on magick, ancient beliefs, "psychogeography"and Fortean research. Nocturnal Emissions became a shape-shifting project and his interest in sound’s psychological impact, particularly its power to alter perceptions of time and space was reflected in works like Practical Time Travel, where audio becomes a medium for simulated memory and dreamlike experience.
Although Nocturnal Emissions has continued mainly as Nigel Ayers' solo project since the mid-1980s, Ayers has collaborated extensively with artists from a diverse range of backgrounds, including Bourbonese Qualk, C.C.C.C., Andrew Liles, Lustmord, Randy Greif, Robin Storey, Expose Your Eyes, Stewart Home, Z'EV, and Zoviet France.
In the early 1990s, he also worked on live soundtracks for Butoh dance performances by Poppo Shiraishi in New York City.

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In addition to his sound art, Ayers is also known for his visual art. His work has been exhibited at the Tate and the ICA. There were also many collaborations on animated films by TV director Charlotte Bill. Ayers' works, from audiovisual installations to underground video pieces, contributed, like those of Psychic TV, to changing the shape of video art in Britain with the same irreverence he brought to music.
Despite the recognition of his work, Ayers has remained committed to artistic integrity and underground independence, rejecting the commercialization of his creative output. This refusal to conform to mainstream expectations has made him a figurehead for a generation of musicians and artists who reject industry norms in favor of a personal, subversive, and autonomous approach to art.

Today, Ayers is based in Cornwall, on a nodal point on the Mary-Michael Ley Lines, and continues to produce sound art and experimental projects, also under his own name, that surprise and challenge his audience. Ayers once wrote that the goal of Nocturnal Emissions was to "turn the world upside down and give it a good shaking." Decades later, that spirit of subversion and transcendence remains entirely intact.