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.