Bye bye 2006. It was a great year for clubbers: lots of off the hook parties, lots of new directions in the music and lots of enthusiasm, all of which bodes well for 2007. To wrap up our coverage, instead of trying to sum up the whole shebang in one gulp, we asked our contributors to each jot down their thoughts on some aspect of dance culture in 2006. Our screeds are cut n' pasted below.

Finally, we have one final piece of poll business to attend to - our contributors’ top five RA podcasts of the year. What's more, we're making our top five available to download again in case you missed them. If you were living under a rock in 2006 and just emerged, you could do worse than check out these sets to catch up on a little of what you missed. 2006 was a hell of a party.

Make me a hit, baby, one more time

It is hard not to still see the great divide between pop and the so-called underground, the easily accessible and the highbrow, the commercially viable and the artistically cool, but then again, when you had Britney Spears’ hairless dong flashing at you from every corners of the Internet in late 2006, it was hard not to admit that she is, really, more punk than Karen O., more sleazy than Peaches AND more intense than Beth Ditto, thus rendering these very segregations rather arbitrary. If this is what being remixed by Justice does to a pop star, then we should really hope for more of those cultural heterotopia moments.

Which is what 2006 gave us aplenty. Having big-name starlettes asking slightly underground remixers to record edgy hits and to make them cool (again) was these recent months exciting trend. The year brought bizarre coupling such as Jamelia and Mr. Oizo/Radio Slave, Madonna and James Holden/Tiefschwarz, or Robbie Williams and Soul Mekanik/Riton/Chicken Lips/Soulwax, just to name a few. Even pretty boy Justin Timberlake jumed onto the dancing cred bandwagon with the help of Linus Love, Patrick Alavi, Freeform Five, and Armand Van Helden.

Of course this is not a new trend – La Spears recorded that legendary ‘Oh Dear’ track with DFA a few years ago already, proof that James Murphy and corporate sucking-up could get along quite well, but in 2006, it couldn’t feel more… natural. Just like Britney’s dong flashing at you, really. - Stéphane Girard

When you gotta go

The need to pee might just be the last remaining challenge that still faces the modern DJ. Beatmatching has been replaced by Ableton warping. Scratching like Q-Bert can be replicated by pushing buttons on whiz-bang gizmos. But when you've gotta go and don't want to interrupt that other flow, DJs are in a bit of a pickle. What to do? Put on one long track and cue up the next (if you can hang on, that is) or just leg it to the can as fast as you can? Dancers also face a similar dilemma. As any experienced clubber knows, timing is everything: when to arrive, when to drop and when to go. Anything could happen during your dash to the loo: you could come on in the queue or, worse, you could miss your favourite track hitting the Funktion One.

Thank god, producers are incorporating new kinds of breaks into their tracks in 2006: bathroom ones. Long tracks in electronic music are nothing new (Hello, Manuel Gottsching!), but 2006 was certainly a year in which many cuts stretched out past the thirteen, fourteen and beyond minute mark. Maybe there’s a need for it: In cities such as Tokyo, London and Berlin, relaxed licensing laws mean parties can extend into the late morning or afternoon. Three hour sets are now five, six hours long or more – especially if there's an afters. All this has had an effect on the music.

But not all of these lengthy cuts are masterpieces. In 2006 there was no shortage of records where not very much was happening at all. Great for that bathroom break, but be warned: that long repetitive go-nowhere track might suddenly unfold into something gorgeous before you get back to the floor (see: Villalobos’ ‘Chromosul’).

But in 2006 many of these long tracks did make use of their length, making it impossible to drag yourself off the dancefloor. Many of RA’s top 30 tracks managed to capitalise on their twelve minutes with agonising build-ups that gave way to floors full of hands in the air, ‘Relevee’, ‘Doppelwhipper’ and ‘Full Clip’ especially. As Audiofly put it, "When you play 'Full Clip' you get ten minutes to go to the toilet and get tequila, which is great". Progressive fans and DJs didn’t need to hang on either: Nic Fanciulli's longbuilder ‘Lucky Heather’ caused roadblocks on the Space terrace this year, but it also caused bottlenecks at the girl's loo. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many women fixing their make-up at one time, only to spot them all back on the dancefloor a few minutes later. Then there was 'Mouth to Mouth'. Clocking in at almost thirteen minutes, I got two email addys and one phone number on a there-and-back trip at the underlooed Loft in Barcelona, and still got back in time to hear the sirens in full force. Elsewhere in the poll, improvisational techno outfit Cobblestone Jazz’s thirteen-minute-plus ‘India in Me’ also got my vote for allowing you the pit-stop you might need if you’ve had a bit of Indian in you.

But the Porcelain King of 2006 must be Ricardo Villalobos for his 37-minute ‘Fizheuer Zieheuer’ (one to listen out for if you're feeling queasy?) and in fact, ALL of his productions in 2006, which each hover above the twelve-minute mark. A conspiracy theorist might say Ricardo is making tracks to make DJing easy for himself, but they’d be wrong: he kept himself busy layering ‘Fizheuer’ under a string of tracks with his DJ sets this year. Which is the way it should be. Just because there’s ten minutes left on the turntable, doesn’t mean it’s time to slack off. Just ask bladder-of-steel Ryan Elliott, whose one-minute a track mixing style doesn’t allow him to go anywhere. Is that why he keeps that water bottle on his decks? – Tami Fenwick

Ibiza in 2006

In 2006 the island saw a record number of visitors. In terms of fashion, the island caught the football bug, with all the male clubbers sporting their nation’s tops in the clubs, bars and restaurants this summer, while musically it caught the minimal bug: Was the island’s unofficial ring tone this year Heartthrob’s ‘Baby Kate’? In the clubs, as always, Ibiza lead from the front with diverse nights at La Troya, Space, DC-10, Cocoon and Pacha; the opening parties at DC-10, Space and Pacha in particular really bumped the season into gear. Two early highlights for me were catching Ryan Elliott at DC-10 and witnessing Mulletover taking the vibe into the hills with their Villa party (which started late, but better late than never). Cocoon witnessed Richie and Ricardo playing techno ping-pong together (with Ricardo’s remix of ‘Sinner in Me’ as the ball) but poor Richie: everywhere he spun on the island he had to put up with trainspotters queuing around the DJ box ogling his homemade Allen & Heath mixer. Michael Mayer and Damian Lazarus took their Stink party to DC-10 and it lasted less than a month – must have stunk maybe? – while the lucky few who made it to Sven Vath’s Cocoon afterparty outdoors somewhere out past San Antonio would have spotted all the top DJs relaxing, dancing and indulging a little. But the key point of interest in Ibiza this summer was that the clubs were not pushing the same sounds: some clubs had minimal techno, others straight up soulful house nights, while Italian parties such as Made In Italy put electro house on offer. Overall, the diversity was great – and we hope the variety and mayhem will continue, despite the Spanish establishment trying their best to right the long, ongoing wrongness! - Mohson Iqbal

Props to the bloggers

Blogs gets a bad rep: their navel-gazing, cruel, rambling, way too personal – but that’s why I like them. I’d rather read a bit of uncensored off the cuff personal opinion than anything “professional”, especially about music. Reading blogs is probably a bad idea for anything important. If I got sick, I wouldn’t check a medical blog. If I got arrested, I wouldn’t trust a legal blog. But for something as silly as music, blogs are ideal. Bloggers don’t have advertisers, they don’t have fact checkers, they don’t have censorship – you can say what you really think, in theory at least. In practice, many bloggers seem to have trouble saying anything, let alone what they really think - hence the mountains of tedium out there. It pains me to say this, but most of my favourite music blogs are written by music critics. I know. Music critics are evil. But at least they can write. Here’s the six or seven music blogs I regularly read:

Props to Philip Sherburne’s blog, which is just as brainiac as his Pitchfork column, but a bit more soulful and personal. He tells a lot of stories about his techno travels to festivals and such around the world, which is always a good read when you’re stuck in front of a computer at home. Nice photos too. Props to Richard Brophy for his new Test Industries blog started this year. Richard is DJ Mag’s go-to man for techno so he knows his music obviously, but his blog is nothing like DJ Mag at all really: it’s stroppy, opinionated and, best of all, gossipy. This is where I found out John Tejada was giving up music to join the BMW Corporation. Okay, that didn’t happen. Well, maybe it’s not a hundred percent reliable, but what do you expect – Reuters? It’s a blog! Props to Tape, three English record obsessives with an evangelical enthusiasm for dance music who manage to balance posting up Biblical length scriptures with actual meatspace clubbing. Which counts for a lot. Not much slips under the radar on Tape. Props go out to Stephane Girard’s blog Let No Man Jack and the thoughts on contemporary electro house therein, which are simultaneously erudite and fucking funny, a difficult balancing act (Okay, I’m a bit biased towards this one because Stephane is a critic here at Resident Evil, but blogging is supposed to be personal, non?) And lastly among the critics, props go out to Stylus Magazine’s Beatz by the Pound blog, which is a good read and recently they’ve moved onto a weekly schedule so check ‘em out. Finally, props to the great sites Filter27 out of New York and Energylab out of Berlin for their release news and links – if you’re a serious news nerd you’d do well to bookmark them. That’s it. Otherwise I just look at gear porn at Music Thing. – Jeremy Armitage

Drum n bass label of the year: Hospital

Hospital Records started laying the groundwork for a golden 2006 late in 2005. In September came ‘Power Ballads’, the jaw-dropping third full-lengther from label founder Tony “London Elektricity” Colman. Then the good folks at Fabric redeemed their spotty history with DnB on the FABRICLIVE imprint, inviting Hospital wunderkind High Contrast to take on no. 25 – still a series-best one year later. January of this year the label hit hard with ‘Hospitalised: 10 Years of Hospital’, a three-disc set of mixes from London Elektricity, High Contrast, and Cyantific showcasing Hospital’s past, present, and future, respectively.

But that was only phase one of Hospital’s plan to take the genre of DnB to the next level: Artist albums from Cyantific and Q-Project shined, as did copious EPs from Nu:Tone, Danny Byrd, Syncopix; ‘Hospitality’ nights have rocked the world from London to Berlin to Tokyo; London Elektricity’s weekly show won best podcast at this year’s BT Digital Music Awards; and new label offshoot Med School, which showcases a quirkier DnB style from unknown producers, is off to a running start with EPs such as Icicle’s bass bomb ‘So Close’, set to drop in January.

All this could certainly read as a press release for Hospital, but it can’t be helped – their output in 2006 has been that good. These guys have made labels such as Dieselboy’s HUMAN imprint – known for their dark, driving, cinematic approach to DnB – look like children playing in a room littered with collectible action figures. Hospital’s DnB style has gone half-man, half-machine: warm and soulful on top but with a smokin’ set of wheels below. The future never sounded so good – here’s hoping they keep it up for 2007. - Dave Rinehart

Papa's got a brand new bag

Dance music is hardly a culture known for its longevity - it craves constant novelty and development. Like the tracks themselves, new elements are added along a linear path only to be quickly discarded – it seems the genre itself is built for obsolescence.

So too with us listeners? I write this as I'm about to join the ever-growing ranks of ‘DJ Dads’, and the imminent collapse of my personal freedom makes me feel slightly panic-stricken. I will no longer be able to go to discotheques whenever the whim takes me. One wheel of steel has already been stowed, replaced by a changing table, and record shopping has had to be curtailed with finances shifted to baby clothes, sterilising units and nappies. Has my time in the sun come and gone?

Surely not. Regardless of recent (minor) adjustments, I listen to and enjoy techno as much as ever. With the march of years I've found myself less frequently manning the decks, going to fewer parties and generally behaving myself more than I did at 19, yet these changes have not come at a cost. If Billie Holiday is heard at home more often than Anja Schneider, rarely does my iPod play anything but techno. 2006 provided my first international techno holiday, and despite my travel bud choosing the World Cup over dancefloor hedonism (he's a year older than me), I danced more than I ever had - like a blathering fool for three long days. So what if it took twice that long to recover - I've always been a frail and sickly type.

And what of the music? While the flood of vinyl gushes forth at an unprecedented rate, the level of quality was higher than ever in 2006. Despite many a tired sounding release, minimal has remained dance music's lingua franca, splintering into countless variants and still capable of throwing curveballs from most factions. To see the weird and wonderful progress made, look at the ketamine-fuelled spin-dryer music of Garbriel Ananda, Hug and Axel Bartsch, the prolific darkness of John Dahlback, the new pointillism of the Mobilee camp or the rhythmic complexities of Ricardo Villalobos and his Chilean cohorts. The future remains an unknown prospect, but that's where techno thrives: it's always the first to peak around the corner and tell us what's coming. And as sleepless nights await me of a different sort, I can thank techno for providing me with at least some degree of preparation. - Joshua Meggitt

The 10 most annoying tracks of 2006

Friday night. The club is packed and the music is outstanding. People are dancing, times are rolling and everything is tight. Until the DJ drops one of those “favourite” tracks. You know the ones. All you need in that moment is a shotgun to show your support for that “perfect” choice! Whatever you hear after that tune, however amazing it is, your party mood is killed. The night is over!

The commercial end of electronic music is taking over like the plague. Shown on TV at least ten times a day, constantly looped on radio stations, there’s no escape even out shopping or at a cafe or a bar. Irritated and annoyed, you have now become what you feared: a jaded clubber. The list:

10. Fedde le Grand – ‘Put Your Hands Up for Detroit’. "... a lovely city", but not a lovely cut anymore.
9. Martijn Ten Velden – ‘I Wish You Would’. Probably the biggest summer hit over here. Hey, DJs, it's winter already!
8. Outwork ft. Mr. Gee – ‘Elektro’. Pa-ba-pa-pa, pa-pa pa-thetic.
7. David Guetta vs. The Egg – ‘Love Don't Let Me Go Walking Away’. The Egg's track ‘Walking Way’ is still one of my favourites – such a happy and pumpin' sound. But those vocals simply…destroy it.
6. Supermode – ‘Tell Me Why’. Teasing melody, bland lyrics, and dull video!
5. Justin Timberlake – ‘Sexyback’. The worst thing about it: DJs don’t even play the remix but the original.
4. Tom Novy – ‘Your Body’. Released in late 2005, "Your Body" is still a DJ’s secret weapon...to extinguish all the joy at your party.
3. Bob Sinclair – ‘Rock This Party’. Annoying from the get-go. If a DJ plays this, I won’t be seeing him again!
2. Martin Solveig – ‘Jealousy’. Cheesy French funk that’s gay enough to turn a drag queen straight.
1. Asle Bjorn ft. Leya – ‘Lucky You’. The most commercial and irritating tune ever. ‘Lucky You’ should be prohibited by law.

What is the point of going to clubs and seeing different DJs if they’re playing this stuff? Aren't we all there to hear something new, something sophisticated and exciting? Why do we have to put up with the ordinary? Don't we deserve classy and worthy electronic music? Yes, we do! So, DJs, please, get rid of these tracks, and bring on the mental underground ones in 2007! - Siana Petro [Sorry, Siana. Gotta add the YouTube links: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 – bastard Ed.]

Hot or not?

Ideally, we should all follow the tunes not the genre. But when it comes to talking broad patterns in dance music, everyone loves a good genre war. While nobody likes to think their favourite music is going down the gurgler, we can all take comfort from the fact that all music goes down the gurgler in the end. Listened to any ragtime recently? So with that in mind, let’s get down to the business of me offending you by having a stab at the six million dollar question: Which genres were hot and which genres were not in 2006?

Let's talk dirty words first. Every genre, in the end, becomes a bit of an epithet, so which was it last year? Unfortunately, our vote goes to electro house. What flew up so very high in 2004 was flapping its wings pretty frantically to keep aloft this year. Strike one against it was that its sound signatures committed the sin of seeping into the mainstream (evidence: D. Ramirez' mix of Bodyrox's 'Yeah, Yeah', Fedde Le Grand's 'Put Your Hands Up For Detroit?', Tocadisco's remix of 'The Egg', Mason's 'Exceeder' etc etc, you know the names, or maybe you don't.) Not that these are bad tunes, but huge tunes will attract the hack technicians with dollar signs in their eyes, and there’s been mountains of badly produced, badly conceived genre cheddar processed this year (article one for the prosecution: Great Stuff – the most commercially successful German dance label in 2006. Heard Eyerer & Chopstick's 'Electric'? Not very good, is it?) And there’s surely more on its way. Even plodding prog jumped onto the electro house bandwagon in 2006 and the result was, well, plodding electro house. I won’t name names, I don’t want to offend. Okay, I changed my mind: 'Warung Beach'. Poor old Rex the Dog, making his comeback on Kompakt with 'Maximise' – what sounded so fresh just two years ago now sounds hopelessly dated.

So what was hot? Minimal. Don’t groan. Yeah, it’s a dirty word to some, but its influence has been undeniable, it's production techniques and sound tropes are being copied left right and centre. Oddly enough, it was the purer, less accessible end of minimal techno which saw the biggest rise in popularity: Hawtin and M_nus sold out around the world, Villalobos was raised to "star" status and in 2006 it’s certainly the default sound in my neck of the woods (Barcelona). So minimal scarves then, Berlin is Mecca, legions of fans, legion of haters – genre wars are a bit naff really, but it is something to talk about, isn’t it? Quite how much all the kerfuffle had to do with the music I'm not sure, but everyone seemed to have an opinion. “Now you get these minimal geeks who think they are really cool because they like this ketamine music,” James Holden frothed to RA back in April. “I grew up with minimalist classical music – that’s minimal. And the bouncing ball delay effect out of Ableton - well done, you've loaded a plug-in! I don't really respect people that jump on the bandwagon.” Tell us how you really feel, James.

Sadly, on its way down fast and still no closer to pulling the ripcord was progressive house. Many of its most revered names seemed to abandon the sound completely in 2006, but surprisingly, the more a DJ moved away from his prog roots, the more he was feted. Sasha, John Digweed and Jimmy Van M all packed tech house, techno and electro house into their sets, and the result was a big glowing thumbs up from the prog fans! On the other hand, Global Underground's ten year anniversary "classic prog" boxed sets flew off shelves, but its latest, 'GU29', dropped to much less fanfare and mixed reviews. Renaissance called in the tried-and-trusted names (Seaman, Faithless, Tomiie), but how many of those CDs really registered, even for prog fans? But there is light at the end of the tunnel: Israel's holy trinity of Guy Gerber, Shlomi Aber and Chaim showed the way forward, hinting at more innovative things to come, while in Europe Minilogue and Audiofly melded proggy structures to the minimal sound palette with success.

Nu-rave? Hot, I suppose, with Kitsune and Modular backing the Klaxons and the whole Ed Banger/Justice thing bubbling along nicely. Simian Mobile Disco even headlined the Renaissance (!) NYE bash in London this week beating out the proggers. But truth be told, I'm too old for it. I don’t really get it. Let’s not pretend to speak wisely about that which we know nothing of. But am I allowed one snarky comment? Is this dance music?

Moving on, more certain was the lift to Detroit-flavoured techno in 2006: Carl Craig pumping out the hits, Martin Buttrich emerging into the spotlight, Delsin Records and the Dutchmen & women (2000 & One, Joris Voorn, Shinedoe, Microfunk, Redshape & co) plugging away at a techno alternative to minimal which seemed attractive and fresh in 2006.

Lastly, deep house was also hot. From Tokyo to San Francisco, London to Berlin, tracks on labels such as Buzzin' Fly, Freerange, Ibadan and Innervisions ended up on the decks of a variety of DJs across the board. Darkmountaingroup's 'Lost Control', Henrik Schwarz, Dixon and Ame's revamp of Derrick Carter’s ‘Where We At’ and Dennis Ferrer's 'Son of Raw' was the sound of the summer for many. Is this a seismic shift? We’re not sure, but even techno heads such as Funk D'Void (as Francois Dubois) are acknowledging the swing back to more soulful sounds. "A lot of producers like Vince Watson are going back to their deep house roots and I think it's coming back in a big way because the soul is missing from minimal. I really like guys like Ame who are good at keeping a techno sensibility but also have some chords in there too." The sound of 2007 then? I hope so. - Jeremy Armitage

It's raining music

Noah was said to have saved all the little critters from the flood by building an ark – but what about us poor wee individuals who have to make do with access and an inbox? For me, if the musical flow of 2006 is held together by a single common stream, it’s that of the distributed deluge. Never before have I uploaded, downloaded, shared, borrowed or stolen so many pieces of music – and with so many incredible livesets available online, the onus was increasingly on nightclubs to justify themselves. Why go out, when the best performances can be heard more cheaply, efficiently and discreetly ‘in the comfort of home’? Well, for lots of reasons, of course. But with my headphones full of last week’s set at Robert Johnson, I feel, all at once, to be swimming in a sea of data and drowning in the loneliness of a totally bodiless culture. Paradoxically though, it seems that online communities and their nascent connections might mean that 2007 is the year a new form of networked likemindedness ‘hooks up’ and makes its transition into flesh. I’ll dance to that. - Peter Chambers

Class of '96: You've come a long way, baby

The big names of electronic dance music from the late nineties met with mixed results in 2006. Fatboy Slim, The Prodigy and Moby followed the lead of The Chemical Brothers by saying fuck it and shitting out greatest hits compilations (Fatboy Slim’s was shamelessly titled ‘Why Try Harder’ even), while golden boy DJ Shadow’s 2006 effort ‘The Outsider’ polarized fans of his moody, stitched-up sonic soundscapes by hopping on board the Bay Area’s hyphy movement – an awesomely obnoxious style of rap that wants to be the soundtrack to your drunken bump ‘n grind on the dancefloor. Not quite ‘Endtroducing…’ in other words.

In the realm of breaks, Freestylers delivered ‘Adventures in Freestyle’, which fans had been chomping at the bit for after the devastating Pendulum collaboration ‘Painkiller’. Based on that stellar track, I didn’t know if I could handle an entire album at that level of awesomeness, but in the end I wasn’t able to stomach the sheer mediocrity of the rest of the ‘Adventures’, which consisted of long, drab hikes through male vocal-driven breaks rock (‘Security’), laughably macho rap rock (‘Fast Life’) and tired, Moby-esque sampling (‘Pocket Full of Sadness’). Freestylers may have taken it underground and came up trumps once, but they couldn’t keep their momentum going in 2006.

More successful was Basement Jaxx’s ‘Crazy Itch Radio’. Unlike ‘Kish Kash’ from 2003, a rather ho-hum effort handicapped by letting N’Sync’s JC Chasez near the mic, this year’s ‘Crazy Itch Radio’ was easily the duo’s best, mostly due to an inspired roster of vocalists: R&B songstress Vula Malinga, Swedish superstar Robyn, and second lady of grime Lady Marga. The production was also as diverse as ever, expertly layering influences plucked from all over the world. In 2006 the Jaxx are superstar DJs, touring with Robbie Williams for Christ’s sake, but they’ve certainly earned their stripes. Ten years on, they’re sharp as tacks. Freestylers and Greatest Hits merchants take note: if you don’t keep reinventing your sound, your window of relevance gets slimmer and slimmer with every passing year. - Dave Rinehart

Mix CDs are dead, d00d

Amidst all the debate about vinyl versus mp3s, another bit of dance culture as we knew it has quietly bitten the dust. Do you remember ‘Jeff Mills Live at the Liquid Room’? Or ‘Grooverider Presents the Prototype Years’? Or even ‘Mixed Up in The Hague’? When these CDs came out everyone had a copy and an opinion. They were large-scale broadcasts from the mind of the DJ to the clubbing public. Careers were made on the basis of mix CDs.

But like all other forms of mass media, the Internet is killing the mix CD and replacing it with something else. All you filthy downloaders out there, how many live mixes do you have on your hard drive? How many podcasts? How many ‘Exclusive Internet mixes’ and rips from the Essential Mix? Personally I still buy vinyl, but I’m damned if I’m going to buy a mix CD with tracks that are several months out of date when I can get the freshest of the fresh from the interwebnetsuperhighway without even opening my wallet. And it’s legal! (Some of the time).

One of the nice things about this shift is that it means DJs get kudos for the kinds of sets they actually play, not for the kinds of things you might put on a mix CD. For example one of my favourite mixes of the year is Ricardo Villalobos’ Live at Awakenings mp3, which oozes the energy and spontaneity of a live set, unlike Ricardo’s slightly dead-sounding mix for Green and Blue last year.

Another nice thing is how democratic this is. All you need to get noticed is talent. Tim Sweeney has rocketed to fame this year via his beatsinspace podcast, solely on the basis of a fresh approach to disco and techno revivalism, delivered week in week out, for free. Two of the most feted mixes of the year on the ILM message boards this year were loaded up from DJs in (of all places) Houston, Texas and Athens, Georgia: Jeffrey Mac’s feelgood ’Meditations in Dub’ and the loose house of Jena Paradies’ ’Latest Bits’ competed with the big names admirably.

For the historically minded, the long-running Deep House Page is a treasure trove of vintage sets. In 2006, without spending a cent, we could all listen to Ron Hardy invent house music on the fly at the Music Box, marvel at Jeff Mills’ previous incarnation as ‘The Wizard’ (he really WAS better in 1987) and experience an actual Larry Levan live mix and learn why he is so revered.

I’m highly optimistic about the prospects for music in a post-CD world. Sure it’s going to be more difficult for John Digweed to rake in the millions he must have earned off mix CDs in the ‘90s, but on the other hand I think it’s going to lead to more people going out more – that money has to go somewhere, right? And if live sets from the Internet are giving us more of an idea what to expect, then DJing’s centre of gravity will shift back towards the live arena, which is really what it’s all about. - Jacob Wright

top RA Podcasts

RA Poll: Top 5 podcasts

RA's new baby in 2006, the Resident Advisor podcast has been rocking offices, gym workouts and home stereos since it launched in March. By the terrabyte, the series stretched the RA servers and impregnated hundreds of thousands of hard drives across the globe. To get a handle on which of the thirty-eight podcasts in 2006 RA contributors liked best, we voted for our favourites in this year’s poll. Congratulations to the winners!

Fifth place went to RA.029 by Rob Mello, our pick of a host of London folk that graced the series. Mello’s set was a housey, bouncey whopper that just plain tasted good, sandwiching the wonder that is Jay Haze’s ‘Soul in a Bottle’ between great tracks by Prins Thomas and Pier Bucci. “One of the best mixes I've heard in a while,” posted scratchnsniff in the forum. “It's deep, it's soulful, it's funky, it's bumping, it’s everything you want in a mix.”

If you were to judge by sheer bandwidth pressure, top prize would go to RA.030 by tall Swede Adam Beyer, our most downloaded podcast of 2006. As it was, Beyer’s hour of pounding techno scored fourth place in the poll – download this if you want to speed up your productivity in 2007.

Third place went to My My, our pick of the German DJs in the series. RA.034 was warm, deep and rammed with unusual selections, bringing the flavour of Berlin afterparties to the table. But their appeal apparently stretches way beyond their home city: “I need a tracklist for this mix!” wrote Kaio from Ghana in the forum. “It's so refreshing!”

Runner up was RA.001, which set an early high water mark for what was to come. Troy Pierce’s industrious and insistent, tightly woven mix fused deep basslines with lush pads and hook-laden melodies, giving many their first taste of summer bombs such as ‘Baby Kate’ and ‘Seeing Through Shadows’, which would later feature at Miami WMC, on the min2MAX compilation and M_nus tours of the USA and Europe.

Many of the podcasts challenged classification: Serge Santiago channelled disco, Maurice Fulton mixed up soul and techno, and Arnaud Rebotini fused goth rock with electro. But perhaps most unclassifiable was our number one pick, RA.027, which somehow made seamless dancefloor sense out of pop, house, techno and beyond. “It was just intended to be a little selection of some of my favourite tracks from the summer to give out to friends and people I met during my last stay in Ibiza,” explains Ewan Pearson. “A little present to commemorate what had been a lovely summer.” And what a lovely summer it was. - RA

Contributors: Jeremy Armitage, Peter Chambers, Richard Chinn, Paul Clement, Cameron Eeles, Tami Fenwick, Stéphane Girard, Chris Hobson, Nico Ilickovic, Mohson Iqbal, Matt Langler, Joshua Meggitt, Tal Messing, Dave Noonan, Siana Petro, Nick Sabine, Kiran Sande, Christopher Thomarios, Jacob Wright, Robbie Younan.