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Maze [Honest Jons] 20. Actress Splazsh, a reminder that Darren Cunningham was just as capable of crafting a naked and melodic gem as he was a cloudy and difficult banger. Perhaps what made it even more amazing, though, was his use of 8-bit effects, making them sound like melancholic accents rather than kitschy nostalgia. Cunningham's ear is like few others in this respect. While he may get grouped in with dubstep because of his age, location and DJing, his productions sounded as unclassifiable as Autechre to these ears in 2010.

- Terry Fonseca In an album full of stark experiments of varying fidelity, "Maze" stood out on Actress', a reminder that Darren Cunningham was just as capable of crafting a naked and melodic gem as he was a cloudy and difficult banger. Perhaps what made it even more amazing, though, was his use of 8-bit effects, making them sound like melancholic accents rather than kitschy nostalgia. Cunningham's ear is like few others in this respect. While he may get grouped in with dubstep because of his age, location and DJing, his productions sounded as unclassifiable as Autechre to these ears in 2010.

One thing you probably didn't see coming in 2010: the glorious return of the anthem. Unlike last year , when ultra-subtle tracks like STL's "Silent State" made the top 5, 2010's top 50 is packed with unapologetically catchy bangers, most of which probably got as much play in Ibiza as they did in Berlin. It's as if club music finally became so niched that the crowds once again yearned for collective experiences.Indeed, if Motor City Drum Ensemble's epic remix of NUfrequency hadn't been officially released in 2009, it might've topped our chart this year. (It'll have to make to do with setting a record for most consecutive months at #1 on RA's DJ charts.) But the RA staff isn't composed solely (or even largely) of DJs. So our list has plenty of weird ones too. UK bass's latest mutations rank nicely, stonefaced techno is still going strong and Chicago's juke phenomenon crashes the party as well. All sorts of music took our fancy this year, this is simply 50 of the most popular among our staff.The Pepe Bradock-esque standout from the UK producer's second EP for the Dutch label.One of the few tracks to emerge from the juke/footwork scene with true single appeal.The first single from the multi-monikered artist's excellentalbum.Feel-good, classics-rooted house from the breakthrough producer.Butch's "No Worries" is the second most charted track of all-time on RA. Butch is the most charted artist of all-time on RA. Cecille is among the top 20 most charted labels of all-time on RA. To say "No Worries" had dance floor credentials would be a gargantuan understatement. And the reason so many DJs were drawn to the record? Well, it was no great mystery: "No Worries" had bags of funk, was fun to mix and was totally undeniable in its ability to move a dance floor—much like most of Butch and Cecille's output.The mashup of driving dub-tech and barely-there diva vocals that launched the Swedish duo.The standout mix of Steffi's solo debut made for an unassuming dance floor favourite.An exercise in delayed gratification, the cut-up disco house jam finally saw release after a 2009 debut.Whatever you'd like to call it—witch house, drag, screwgaze—there's no denying there'safoot with acts like Balam Acab and Salem. Combining the purple drank feel of screwed and chopped hip-hop with haunted, nostalgic ambient, the mixture works as obvious home listening material. But take a look at the people charting it too: Michael Mayer and Superpitcher. And hear in John Roberts' podcast how well it can run directly into barebones Chicago house. Who knows? We may just need to start calling it dance music.Classy techno from one of the next generation of Dutch artists associated with Delsin.Thrown into a no-nonsense techno set, Spaceape's sinister rhymes are a devastating curveball.Raw, noisy, rave-powered bangers: a part of any balanced record collection.Hearing this one out in a club, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's some '90s classic.In the year that Autonomic turned drum & bass on its head, there were many attempts to define exactly what was occurring in the ambiguous spaces between the half-stepping beats and the swelling, retreating ambience. One tangible thing certainly existed for Instra:mental—neurotic tension. "Let's Talk" exists on parallel planes of delicacy and dread, shifting from an innocuous late night exchange to a shadowy stranger in the night: "Let's talk about your favourite things... I'll tell youfavourite things." The use of Drexciyan-edged slow house only heightened the sense of paranoiac pleasure.This one's so sultry, it makes Ninca Leece and Bruno Pronsato look like Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg.Shed's effective one-note dub techno stomper.Occasionally, we get it wrong. We posited a year ago that despite its charms, the slow, chugging pace and restless sonic shifting of "Love Cry" would "probably make it impossible to hear on many dance floors." As we now know, it proved to be one of the few overground hits that appealed to DJs of all strands, galloping rhythmically alongside house, dubstep and many genres in between. It was a simple formula—rolling live drum loop, thrumming melodies, soul sample and plodding bass—that Kieran Hebden made much greater than the sum of its abstract parts.The R&B-obsessed producer revealed his hand on this ridiculously catchy little number.Deep house from the American new wave direct from Queens, NYC.A late entry from Morgan Geist and Damon C. Scott saw out 2010 in style.Coughing, panting, sniffling and so, so many claps.Tensnake bettered an insta-classic in the unlikeliest of ways: By putting an eterna-classic in the middle.A deep bassline undergirds this anthemic house remix from the Swiss producer.David Kennedy's moody jungle-tinged dubstep anthem.Heard while Keith Worthy was DJing a Space Dimension Controller track this year: "Whoa! Gotta put something else on. It's getting way too sexy in here." He's right, of course. The young Jack Hamill's electro-fied productions were typified by their absolutely intoxicating basslines, and that's on full display on "Journey to the Core of the Unknown Sphere." The lengthy (for him, anyway) track goes through a few different stages, but the connecting thread throughout is that buoyant analogue bounce.DJ Harvey is a hard one to pin down. A former punk turned Ministry of Sound DJ, now a cult favorite for fans of Balearic, disco and house (with particularly strong followings in Singapore and Japan). "Gunship" is his first piece of recorded music in a decade, and it does a good job of reflecting this mosaic personality. Driven by a minimal half-melody, a hammy guitar lead, and the words "big guns!!!" screamed in pseudo orgasm, it's made of ingredients that would never work together without Harvey's special panache.Matt Cutler's joyous nostalgia found no finer distillation in 2010 than in this 10-inch A-side.Dresden's bright young house hope builds it up slowly, just to bring you down.UK bass music's most introspective solo artist remixes UK bass music's most introspective duo.The advanced sound scientists show that they can go straight-ahead with the best of them.



