We often hear about 2007 being the turning point for dance music (listen to the 2007 dance & electro playlist) and there’s no denying it was a huge cross roads and cacophony of indie meeting electro. But if we are to get into the meat of dance music’s, musical evolution into the mainstream, 2008 was extremely influential.

A year that saw the likes of Crookers, Pnau, The Bloody Beetroots and many more come out of the woodworks, music pushed from being blended from bands, to owning its own space.

We are talking about a time where producers were competing to create the next big explosive phwoar moment in their songs. Music that would build to a bass drop that was designed to get crowds of thousands of people dancing. Nothing said this more than songs like Fedde Le Grand’s ‘Put Your Hands Up For Detroit’, ‘My People’ by The Presets and Proxy’s hard as nails ‘Raven’. You can listen to the playlist below.

For those who want to go a bit deeper and hear some of the behind stories from back in the day, look no further than this recent podcast with The Presets. It goes into their story of humble beginnings to playing on Daft Punk’s world famous ALIVE tour and the illusive message behind their music. Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Music where we release one podcast a month.