From the indie-electronic crossovers that whet global appetites for synths and drum machines in 2010, to the inventive club styles that erupted and reached wider audiences, the early years of the decade were defined by a sense of aesthetic flux, with genre tribalism changing rapidly.Įverything from hip-hop, ambient and pop, to dubstep, jungle and techno weaved into one another, launching new scenes and trends with albums of forward-thinking sounds. Looking at the evolution of electronic music over the past ten years, it’s incredible to see its broadening cultural prominence, particularly in the aftermath of the noughties’ indie boom. Charting the evolution of a musical landscape is a valuable cultural exercise, too - especially if we want to understand where it’s going. And yet, it’s fun to look back on the sounds and styles that shaped a year to revisit the albums and artists you might have forgotten, and to reignite relationships you had with tracks as if they were old friends.
The tracks that take you back to your most important moments of 2014 won’t even tickle the memories of others.
An album that meant the world to you might make someone else’s blood boil. How do you rank a decade’s worth of music? The truth is, you can’t.