2015: The Mixmag Awards

It's been another rollicking year in dance music.

No one even says the word rollicking any more but that's how much fun we've had.

As ever it's been thrills, spills and far too many nights out. What better way to round up a thundering 12 months than by dishing out awards – some serious and heartfelt, others just for the lulz – to some of the key, headline-making players.

We've chosen quality DJs (natch), personal heroes, some wince-inducing failures (sorry-not-sorry) and one pint-sized champ who stole everyone's hearts.

Welcome to the second annual Mixmag Awards...

Four Tet's become the people's champion over the last few years. His Boiler Room appearances, in which he selects killer records surrounding by blissed-out fans, are the stuff of legend and his recent commitment to self-releasing music and sacking off traditional PR and press (he reveals new records via Twitter, for example) mean he's become something of an industry anti-hero. Of course, when you've been inovating the game for as long as he has (he's released over 10 forward-thinking LPs under Fout Tet and his real name, Kieran Hebden, since the turn of the millennium), you learn how to rewrite the rules and do things your own way. Hell, that's what he's done throughout 2015 and what leads us to bestow him with this most prestigious Outstanding Contribution award.

Four Tet's year started in bittersweet fashion: he and Floating Points went back-to-back at the final party at London's legendary Plastic People on January 2. The two were chosen because they both held residencies at the club and epitomised its freewheeling music policy. They played for some six hours and gave Plastics the send off it deserved. Then in March another b2b set, this time with Skrillex across town at a sticky-floor venue in Camden to show what happens when leading artists from two supposedly very different scenes come together. Indeed, with Four Tet's experimentalism and Skrillex's love of Aphex Twin, perhaps the pair aren't so different after all. Either way, they sent sparks flying. He dropped latest album 'Morning/Evening' via his Text label on summer solstice in July, perhaps feeling that the longest day of the year would be the perfect time to listen to the LP's two 20-minute tracks. In August he played the main stage at Dekmantel festival in Amsterdam, turning in one of the best sets of the event. His selection was insane, moving silkily between cult garage records, crowd-pleasing UK funky, sun-splashed house that perfectly suited the outdoor arena and, like any fucking good DJ, some proper surprises (bangers from Eric Prydz and Ruff Sqwad being two). The resulting recording has to be one of the best online mixes of the year. He then affirmed his people's champion rep by throwing a belting rave in Brixton with the Hessle Audio boys, Floating Points, Daphni and Joy Orbison for six quid. And to finish 2015, he casually put his name to a new Katy B tune (co-produced with FloPo) and landed one of the top spots in Mixmag's DJs Of The Year list. Unstoppable.

Never has a music-related movie received so much hate off the back of a trailer than We Are You Friends. The Zac Efron-fronted EDM romp stank of something rotten early doors and fans of dance music had every right to be dubious. We knew that the tale of a 20-something DJ trying to make it big in the mainstream market would be pretty crap but no-one predicted it would fail as spectacularly as it did. We went to review it with an open mind but the rancid turd proved us all right the moment the credits rolled. Awful tunes, cringe-worthy acting, misleading glamorisation of the music world and some fucking ridiculous quotes, for instance: "All you need is a laptop, some talent and one track. That track is your ticket to everything." Behave! Luckily it seems that the film fell on deaf ears and was unwittingly boycotted by right-minded cinema goers ever. WAYF had one of the worst openings for a Hollywood studio movie of all time, raking in just over $1.5 Million in its opening weekend. Seems fair – it was shite.

As one of the producers behind seminal dubstep tune 'Night', our respect for Benga already ranked pretty high. But when the former Magnetic Man member took to Twitter in September to reveal that excessive drug taking and touring made him develop bipolar disorder and schizophrenia (leading to him being sectioned), that respect only solidified further. Mental health's sadly still that awkward elephant in the room in dance music and society at large, but Benga's admission had as much impact as the wobbles in '26 Basslines'. Fans thanked him for giving them hope and DJs like Skream, Midland and Scuba all came out in support. "Nobody wants to come clean, let alone an artist," he said in a later interview, but EDM giant Nicky Romero soon shared his anxiety troubles. We're unsure whether that was inspired by Benga, but it's a very positive step forward.

What d'ya know about marathon DJ sets!? Probably not as much as Italian maestro Marco Carola who thought it would be a laugh (maybe inspired by our guide to a perfect prolonged set) to play for 24 hours at Sunwaves Festival in Romania in May. "You for real?" you ask. Yes we are. He really did go for a whole day on the decks, having to park his cheeks on a stool for parts of his set. Although the crowd were absolutely loving the rolling house and techno grooves from the Music On boss (as seen in this video), his spontaneous extended set obviously meant other DJs were pushed aside. tINI's set was cancelled because of "unforeseen circumstances" and although we'd hate to stir things up, you don't have to be elegant TV sleuth Poirot to suspect Mr Marathon Man could've been the reason why. Mad respect to Marco, but has he got it in him to beat the 200 hours set by Norberto Loco in Ireland last year? There's only one way to find out, promoters…

The Black Madonna is the person we want to be on a dancefloor. Her love for dance music is infectious and her interviews beam with optimism, despite regularly tackling issues of inequality in the scene and the industry that surrounds it. Having spent most of her life in Chicago, it seems fitting that she believes in the power of house music to provide happiness as well as shelter. Go see her DJ at one of her gigs around the world and her selections will make you feel really fucking good. And behind the scenes at Smart Bar, the legendary Windy City venue where she's Music Director, she's busy making sure the dancefloor and DJ booth is as broad a church as possible. "We want to see a club that looks like Chicago and we want to see a club that's full of women and men of many different colours and gender expressions," she told us earlier this year. "This is a rich city and that's what house music looks like too. House music, the history of it in this city, is one of the most amazing, diverse collisions of people that has happened in the history of musical culture. We're trying to make sure our doors are open." Her positivity shines through the bullshit and when she plays, she dances and smiles and sweats and the crowd go with her, gladly and joyfully. This is what dance music is all about.

Hamburg's Helena Hauff has a punk-as-fuck attitude that we wished we had the guts to pull off. She stopped going to university back in the day because she wanted to concentrate on buying records, drinking beer and, later, making music on her newfound love: analogue equipment (or "machines', as she calls the contents of her studio). She got into dance music culture via anything-goes-on-any-night-of-the-week hangout Golden Pudel and also threw a series of nights there. And this year's breakthrough album 'Discreet Desires' is about fulfilling the personal wishes that are kept hidden in the shadows of the soul. "You can't do certain things because someone tells you you're not allowed to," she told us in the summer. "For example, you have to study and become a lawyer or an accountant. You work and then you're dead. A discreet desire might be that you just don't give a fucking shit about that." The techno she plays is as uncompromising as her point of view and it's all underlined by a lick of mischief, too. Right after we interviewed her at Dekmantel festival, she considered nicking a golf buggy then joked: "I'm better at rolling fags than DJing. To be honest, if there was a rolling-fag job out there, I could really make some money." Helena, you're a fucking ledge.

Richie Hawtin and Sir Patrick Stewart. Say no more.

Not since Martin Garrix burst onto the scene with 'Animals' at the tender age of 17 have we seen a younger DJ smash it with as much confidence and power. We tipped Oshi as one of our artists to watch in 2016 and he's under 20, but there's one pint-sized DJ who's taken the world by-storm and he's not even out of nappies yet. DJ Arch Jr is the 3-year-old South African sensation who possess the best EQ skills we've potentially ever seen. First spotted on viral videos across Facebook and YouTube, the utterly adorable DJ-in-training rocks his own pair of Beats headphones and CDJs before tweaking the bass, giving it some on the delay and essentially live remixing some of the country's best house music. As cute as it was, it was just a video on Facebook, but soon Arch was all over televisions across SA as he appeared on South Africa's Got Talent. Jr looked pretty confused by everything but that didn't stop him zipping through the first round and straight to the live finals. He showed off his skills once more and won the whole fucking thing. Again he didn't really have any idea what was going on, but he's still 500,000 grand richer (about £25,000) and his Dad is made up. Let's see what you're up to in 10 years Arch, then we can talk about a cover.

'Heroes', 'Let's Dance' and 'Ziggy Stardust' are just some of the timeless classics that David Bowie is responsible for but this year he delved into dance music territory with 2015's breakout smash 'House Every Weekend'. Wait. That wasn't by David Bowie? What do you mean that wasn't fucking Bowie, it says it right there: David Zow... Oh shit. That's right, Mr Zowie is in fact named after one of music's greatest entities and boy has he had a big year. 'House Every Weekend' was hammered by every mainstream DJ on the circuit. Annie Mac championed it and it became the anthem for a generation of shufflers who just wanted a song to call their own. It hit the number one spot but the question on everybody's lips was: what's Zowie going to do next? Well, he's not released any more music, just the one single this year and a thorough search on the web doesn't throw up many results for his gig list. Looks like he played at Egg and The Qube Project in London a few times, oh and we saw him play one of the main stages at Creamfields so that's at least three right? Either way, that one hit has literally done wonders for Dave and next year we can't wait for his follow up 'Techno Every Weekend'.

Here at Mixmag, we go to our fair share of afterparties (it's in our contracts). Some of them you arrive at thinking "what the fuck possessed me to come to this depraved flat that's playing emo-techno at 7am" and you either leave or come to the sad realisation that this is you until lunchtime. Sometimes though, you strike gold, you find that perfect spot after the rave where the tunes are spot-on, the location is calm yet interesting and the vibe is perfect. These parties are rare but during ADE this year, we're pretty sure we found the one. As we left Circo Loco's mammoth party at Loveland, we were approached by Seth Troxler who asked us if we wanted to come to a party on a crane. Naturally we were intrigued but what followed were the best five hours of the week. Faralda Crane near the docklands housed a small, 100-capacity room at the top of some winding stairs. In that room were windows overlooking the Amsterdam docks and Troxler was churning out romantic, brain-soothing tunes. Sure you could explore the crane and climb to even dizzier heights but that little room housed a free bar, beautiful music and the owner, who reduced us to tears after he claimed to have made his majestic snake-skin boots himself (guess you had to be there). It's hard to really put into words how good this party was but we found clubland's version of heaven and we'll never forget it.

Seth Troxler comes out with so many gems that he could probably take second, third, fourth and fifth place in this category, too. But it's his one comparing K to brown that made us chuckle the most and decide there and then, way back in March, that he'd be picking up this monumental award (thank us later, Seth). If you're wondering why on earth he said it, he was dishing out words of wisdom on drug use in dance music, saying he'd much prefer people to get high on ecstasy rather than the "fucked" horse tranquiliser. After all, who wouldn't rather see a raver thinking they're the little fella from The Snowman than - if the bump of K was a bit more of a whack - something out of Resident Evil? If that's how you feel, too, take Seth's words of advice and "just take ecstasy and trip". It won't be last you hear from him, though.

Kelela's debut mixtape 'Cut 4 Me' was one of our favourite records of 2013, so we were very hyped to see it arrive in physical format this year. Of course, as a crew defined by their constant progression and trailblazing at the cutting edge of club music, it wouldn't be very "Fade To Mind" to put out an unaltered collection of two-year-old tracks (two years in FTM terms is practically a millennium for us mortals after all), so we got a whole new batch of remixes as part of the deluxe-edition release. This bonus disc epitomises the label's passion for evolution, with a number of the producers responsible for the original mixes returning to rework and update the tracks into new versions. It's a mindset that makes everything they release sound fresh as fuck, which is why this selection of remixes stand out as the best of the year.

Some things in this world are unfair: generic EDM is wildly popular, Donald Trump appears to enjoy his life, Mesut Özil isn't recognised as one of the best midfielders of his generation, and so on. It should always be a point of celebration, then, when any of these injustices are overturned, so we were pleased to see Richard L. Spencer pick up a big novelty-sized cheque for $24,000 this year. He's the former lead vocalist and saxophone player of The Winstons, and one of the men responsible for the widely-sampled Amen Break drum pattern. You've all heard it, it's featured in basically every jungle, d'n'b and breaks track ever, propelling energy into the mix with its skipping rhythm. However, he had never seen a penny for his efforts until this year when a crowdfunding campaign started by breakbeat DJ Martyn Webster raised some cash to reward Spencer for his seminal work. Praying hands emoji, amen.

For their festival debut, the Dirtybird squad took everyone back to their youth with their very own Campout. The only differences between Camp Dirtybird and summer camps in American movies were that no one was preaching sobriety and the camp counselors were actually semi-famous DJs. Claude VonStroke, J.Phlip, Justin Martin and more led the 'campers' in all sorts of wholesome games like ultimate frisbee and tug-o-war – who knew activities were so much fun? While the daytime games made for good laughs and lots of rolling in the grass (pun intended), it was the single stage bumping the signature Dirtybird house and techno that had everyone wide-eyed and properly stuck to the floor. Kill Frenzy and J.Phlip brought the right dose of techno that sent everyone into a weird and wonderful place, just as they needed it the most.

Despite rising to household-name status with a string of chart-topping, silky r'n'b singles at the start of this century, Craig David had faded into relative obscurity in recent years, his name lingering on in mainstream culture only through repetition of the tired Bo' Selecta! meme from the mouths of the type of people that still quote Channel 4 sketch shows a decade after cancelation. We missed him dearly, so were delighted to see Craig roar back into life in 2015 and overcome the ridicule of parody with legitimacy. A straight up banger cannot be mocked, and his Big Narstie collab 'When The Bassline Drops' is just that. Welcome back Craig, we love you.