2007-2017 might just be the greatest decade in dance music history

We're celebrating the last 10 years of dance and electronic music with the Label Of The Decade poll. Here, Joe Muggs explains why 2007-2017 been so momentous for our culture

These days, it's hard to imagine a single musical revolution as universally transformational as the arrival of rock 'n' roll or acid house. Instead, it seems, the things that change our lives drastically are far more technological and political than cultural. After all, think back to 2007: there was no Instagram, no Whatsapp, no Snapchat, no Spotify. Twitter was an obscure tool used by net geeks and Facebook was just getting popular, while Apple was just launching something it called the iPhone. And nobody suspected that the global recession, Brexit, or the Russians hacking a US election to install a reality TV star as president were around the corner.

Everything that's happened musically in the last decade can sometimes feel like it's come in the wake of the huge shifts that have taken place in the rest of our lives – the myriad sounds and styles that have come and gone can be turbulent, chaotic, and difficult to keep track of. There's not been one generation-defining movement through which we can view the chaos of the times; even the explosion of EDM through the USA and beyond felt less like something new than just an expansion of the commercial club culture that was there all along. Raving is raving is raving, right?

And yet, when you start looking at the big picture, that EDM explosion represented the centre of musical and cultural upheavals as revolutionary as anything in the 20^th century. There might not have been a Year Zero, but dance and electronic music culture in its ever-replenishing, ever-diversifying, ever-hungry way has had as much vitality, surprise and joy over the last 10 years as at any time in the past. You could even argue that 2007-2017 is its best decade ever. Just look at the spectacular, ridiculous, glorious, meteoric rise and self-destruction of dubstep, for instance.

As 2007 started dubstep was barely out of its own niche, still really a scene of a couple of hundred mates, but by the end of that year, Caspa & Rusko's fabriclive mix had sent it supernova. By 2009 there were top 10 hits in the UK and arena shows across the USA and it kept growing exponentially until in 2012 it went off a cliff. It almost feels as if we're still reeling from the preposterousness of it all, and the full impact of what transpired in those years is still to be appreciated.

The mainstreaming of dubstep wasn't just important in its own right: it also helped reconnect the wider club scene. Because of its mongrel nature as a sound, it also formed the linking point between other scenes that had been highly atomised since the 90s. Drum ‘n’ bass, techno, house, grime, garage, reggae, electro, Chicago's footwork scene and the indie-dance of nu rave all found common ground with dubstep, and thus with each other. Whether it was Skream remixing Klaxons or Villalobos reworking Shackleton, hybridity was the name of the game as dance music surged forward.

So, as the 2010s began, a raft of new generation UK labels built around tight collectives – Hyperdub, Tectonic, Night Slugs, LuckyMe, Keysound, Butterz, Numbers, Hessle Audio – each created their own vivid and distinctive styles by combining elements of what was happening around them. In the USA, similar things were happening with the likes of Mad Decent, Dirtybird and Fool's Gold, while the Californian (but also global) “beat scene” led by Flying Lotus created its own kaleidoscope of psychedelic fusions. Catch-all terms like “post-dubstep” and “bass music” couldn't hope to capture the vitality and versatility of the music that was being made, but anyone out there on the dancefloor understood it perfectly.

This hugely diverse zone didn't push the old genres aside, though. Quite the opposite, in fact: the existing club sounds each got revitalised, in part by what was happening in the new school. House and techno burst out from the stranglehold of the 90s generation of Superstar DJs and refreshed themselves from the mainstream to the underground. From the super-slick sounds of Innervsions to the dark intensity of Ben Klock to the world-conquering, UK garage-influenced bump ‘n’ bounce of Disclosure. The four-to-the-floor has been huge this past decade.

Meanwhile, the fact that dons like Kerri Chandler, Theo Parrish, Carl Craig, Omar S and Todd Edwards remain revered by ravers half their age shows that the roots haven't been forgotten, while in the fringes things like lo-fi, slo-mo, stoner and deconstructed sounds keep eroding the boundaries of genre. You can see it happening in drum 'n' bass, which both unexpectedly turned into hugely bankable pop music, and managed to regain its experimental mojo. Ditto grime, which after a difficult flirtation with major labels and pop crossover, learned to operate 100 per cent on its own terms, creating a new kind of superstar from the likes of Skepta, Stormzy, Kano, Novelist and co.

The globalisation of the club world changed everything, too. Whether it's fizzing K-Pop meets EDM from Seoul or ragged analogue electronica from Minsk, the intense Gqom sound of Durban or Teklife-inspired footwork from Belgrade, Tokyo and Santiago, the international electronic world was more networked and more ready to share inspiration than ever. Most recently this has found glorious expression in the form of the NON Worldwide crew, an “African diasporic” collective of radical diversity and radical politics who completely rewire the lines of influence between sounds and styles, pop and underground, across continents in ways that fuck with your mind but sound amazing in the dance.

If all that sounds like a lot, it's only the start. There was also the skanking glory of UK funky; the return of Aphex Twin; the explosion of underground festivals with awesome production values; the elegant emo-bass of The xx and James Blake crashing into the US mainstream; the constant boom of Atlanta rap beats; the massive resurgence of eyes-rolled-back ambient; Joker, Rustie, Swindle, Hud Mo and blasts of neon synth; a loud and joyful contingent reminding us of dance music's LGBTQ+ roots; the menace of UK road rap; Norwegian space-disco taking over the world's festivals; Teklife using the tragic loss of DJ Rashad as impetus to consolidate their achievements and make juke/footworking a sound for the ages; a dozen weird “internet genres” like #Seapunk and Simpsonwave; the work of untold archivists to bring us gems from the past, whether that be 2003 Big Apple dubstep, 60s Nigerian funk stompers or 80s Japanese new age relaxation tapes...

And on it goes. And on. And on. This last decade has been a serious trip. No, there was no single “punk moment” or “acid house moment”, but that's precisely the point. There is no need. There is no longer one musical or cultural establishment to be overthrown by a new movement: just a torrent of music, some good, some bad, but which can't be summed up in some obvious credo or fashion statement, and which it'll take decades more to decode and understand. And here we are, still in the thick of it, with more to discover around every corner, and the musical culture constantly changing our minds, our attitudes and our ways of being. As a wise man recently said: what a time to be alive.

Joe Muggs is a freelance journalist and regular contributor to Mixmag. Follow him on Twitter

Patch Keyes is a freelance illustrator and regular contributor to Mixmag. Check his site here

Key faces and label logos from the last 10 years, from left to right in the illustration above: Diynamic, Teklife, Hyperdub, Maya Jane Coles, Hot Creations, Seth Troxler, Tempa T, Aphex Twin, Deadmau5 (founder of Mau5trap), Rustie's 'Glass Swords' out via Warp, Skrillex (founder of OWSLA), Burial, Helena Hauff (whose debut album dropped on Werkdiscs, a sub-label of Ninja Tune), Justice's 'Cross' logo used on each of their albums released via Ed Banger

Vote in the Label Of The Decade poll below