Mike Davies

It's been another strange year - some ups and downs, returns to normality for some, but one thing has been clear throughout 2021, the dance music scene has still been capable of kicking out some fantastic music. As we round out the year, we present our editor's picks of their favourite tracks from the past 12 months. Will Sparks - Not

In March 2006, Jack Dorsey, then an undergraduate at the University of New York, took to his newly created platform "twttr" and typed out ""just setting up my twttr". It was the very first "Tweet" on the platform that would be renamed Twitter some six months later. It was seen by no one, given he was the only user at

If you were asked to pick the darkest year for dance music since it first came to being in the 1980s, you couldn’t go far wrong with 2008. Clubs were closing by the day, major dance music festivals were having to branch out, booking indie bands as their headline act, and even BBC Radio 1, normally the bellwether of dance

Monday July 19th finally saw the UK remove almost all domestic Covid restrictions, the first time since March 2020 that everyday life in the country hasn't been restricted due to the pandemic. International travel is still widely affected, and people are being asked to "exercise caution" when it comes to things like masks, with many places like major supermarkets or

Having initially been postponed in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Ultra Europe was due to take place this summer on July 9th to July 11th in Split, Croatia after a year's delay. However a statement from the festival released today (June 26th) now sees the Ultra Europe postponed for another year, and the event is now due to take

June 21 has been touted by the UK government since February as the final stage of the "roadmap" to ending all Covid social restrictions. The final stage of a four-step roadmap will see any remaining restrictions removed, crucially including the full reopening of nightclubs and a removal of any restrictions on mass gatherings such as festivals. The first three stages

UK pilot events that took place in Liverpool in early May have not caused "any detectable spread" of Covid-19 according to the city's public health director Matt Ashton. Two club nights at Bramley Moore Dock, a mini festival in Sefton Park, and a business conference at the end of April, saw a total of 13,000 people gather with no social

Two weeks ago the UK saw Liverpool take part in a series of Covid pilot events as part of the government's Events Research Programme - two 3000 capacity shows at Bramley Moore Dock, and a 5000 capacity event in Sefton Park. Since then, the industry has been waiting with baited breath for the outcome, and while it is only the

As the UK continues down the roadmap to ease Covid-19 restrictions, more and more effort is being put into how major events and festivals will go ahead this summer. It is hoped that after June 21 there will be no restrictions on mass gatherings, but with this not 100% certain as yet, major event organisers are taking steps to plan

Sampling is as old as electronic music itself, with the earliest avant garde "electronic" music consisting of real world samples manipulated by then-new recording technology. When hip-hop exploded in the early 80s, sampling became the backbone of the genre, but dance music wasn't far behind. Thousands of artists have sampled thousands of track over the years, but perhaps the most

There are many iconic names synonymous with Ibiza, but perhaps the king of them all is Space. Opened in 1986 before dance music exploded on the island, the superclub closed its doors for good in 2016 and the building underwent massive refurbishment before reopening as Hi Ibiza, part of the Ushuaia Group. Yet founder and owner Pepe Rosello has made

As the UK's vaccine program reaches its final stages, with just those aged under 40 with no underlying health conditions left to go in terms of a first dose, and the "Roadmap" to normality reaching it's penultimate stage this month, the government are hard at work compiling data as we move ever closer to all restrictions being dropped. This weekend

It's probably fair to say the music video isn't high on the list of priorities when it comes to dance music - the vast majority have none, many are almost an afterthought for promo purposes, some simply consist of a bunch of live footage. Yet occasionally there is a track which takes on a music video as a high concept

It's been a long 14 months, and it's probably summed up best in the words of Marea Stamper, better known as The Blessed Madonna - "This year we've had to lose our space, we've lost dancing. All these things that we took for granted". While her track with Fred again might yet become an anthem for the generation that suffered