2016: Carl Cox crowned the king of dance music

We're looking back at the trends that defined dance music in 2016. First up, the unstoppable Carl Cox...

“What are you up to?” we asked Carl Cox in November. “I’m just hanging out, which is practically nothing,” he says, booming into a laugh suitable for one of dance music’s biggest characters. He’s in Melbourne, Australia, his October to March residence for the last 11 years, “messing around with cars, motorbikes and barbecues.” It sounds like the activities of a man in retirement, but Coxy’s not retired, far from it. It’s just a way for the Ibiza icon to put his foot on the brake and chill out after a whirlwind year. His year.

2016 was destined to be his from the moment he revealed Space, his Ibiza home for 15 years, would be going into the hands of Ushuaïa at the end of the season. “Once that happens, everything changes. So I have no desire to stay in that club,” he said in 2015. A club that had to move the DJ booth, fix up the toilets and install a new soundsystem in order to secure his Music Is Revolution residency. Carl Cox is Space. It’s where he became the King of Ibiza. All eyes were always going to be on him as he played out his final year at the Playa d’en Bossa palace.

Carl played for 10 hours at the Music Is Revolution (renamed The Final Chapter this year) closing party on September 20. He spun wax for the first time in 10 years for the occasion, dropping tracks like ‘The Bells’ by Jeff Mills and Joey Beltram’s demonic classic ‘Energy Flash’. The guy was never going to go into it half-heartedly. If Kim Kardashian broke the internet with her bare buttocks and a bottle of champagne, then Carl Cox broke dance music’s ‘net with some bounce and fizz of his own as his set was live streamed worldwide. “Legendary,” said one comment. “Absolutely incredible,” went another. Finally, something positive filling up our news feeds in 2016.

A month later he was bidding farewell at the official Space closing party. “This is not normal,” he emotionally announced at the start, later bringing tears to the dancefloor with the last track of the club’s 27-year history. With his final full season came a Mixmag cover in June and a Thursday night party in fabric’s Room One, a joyous set of house and techno classics, and an In Session packed full of nasty-edged tech tracks from his and Jon Rundell’s label Intec Digital, a label he’s looking to be more hands-on with next year.

By the end of this year, he’d have totalled 59 gigs, clocking up air miles all around the world, including Sydney, Peru and Dubai. Not bad for a 54-year-old. Glastonbury got him back for the first time in three years, he launched his own festival, Pure, in Australia and he even played the House of Commons, rounding off with a documentary dedicated to him that aired on Channel 4. Pretty amazing for an early champion of acid house, once a wide-smiled menace for the British government. He’s gone from playing Danny Rampling’s club Shoom and knocking out hardcore at Fantazia in the late 80s and early 90s to hosting Carl Cox & Friends at Ultra Music Festival in Miami for the 12th year. He might be slowing down in Ibiza next year, playing “about three to four parties on the island”, but 2017’s already taking shape with bookings at The BPM Festival in Mexico and The Social Festival in Bogota, Colombia, as well as four dates in Australia for Pure. What did we tell you? He’s far from retired.

It’s really no surprise that Dr Dre, Naomi Campbell and P Diddy are fans, as revealed by the man himself, and that 17 million listeners now tune in to his weekly Global Radio show. And that MBE for him that’s the subject of a petition? Prince Charles will be handing it over real soon, no doubt. From the future King of England to Carl Cox, undisputed king of dance music.

Dave Turner is Mixmag's Digital News Editor. He won't sleep until Carl gets that MBE