A compilation of the 5 most enchanting works highlighting the last decade continues with its second part.

In the 2010s, which remains in mind like yesterday for many of us, we all witnessed so many fascinating dance music pieces. Now, when we look back, let’s bring to mind the 5 breathtaking pieces that left their mark on the last decade that sums up the era.

In the 2010s, the rhythm and tension increased, hypnotizing and controlling large masses, and becoming a modernized dance music genre day by day. In this respect, this period of time, which seems to be a time of opportunity for many artists, has been the subject of wonderful works.

The Naked and Famous – Passive Me, Aggressive You

2008 was the year of MGMT, followed by 2009 which saw the rise of Passion Pit and their glorious synthesiser driven fuzz-pop. Here in 2010, New Zealand’s next big thing The Naked and Famous are set to take their place and have indie kids the world over going spastic on the dance floors with the release of their debut LP Passive Me, Aggressive You.

The Naked and Famous have delivered a surprisingly intense, dark affair that sports a few dream-pop moments with singles “Young Blood” and “Punching In A Dream”, but on the whole showcases a lyrical depth that belies their tender years and is more rewarding than anything their contemporaries have produced.

Groove Armada – Black Light

Groove Armada emerged from the dance explosion of the early 90s to find themselves soundtracking a thousand adverts. Since the ubiquity of At the River though, they have chosen to move away from the coffee table and towards the club with tracks such as the reggae-inflected Superstylin’. Black Light, their sixth album, finds them enlarging their repertoire to relax into wider influences. In the absence of a frontman they are aging well.

With the dance genre competing with late 90s RnB for the largest phone bill for guest artists, this album is predictably a collaborative effort. This album understands dance music is as much about the getting ready and the come-down as it is the club, and its slightly chaotic first half echoes the sound of home drinking, shared hairdryers and waiting mini-cabs.

David Guetta – Listen

When David Guetta hit the studio to record Listen, his first album in three years, the trailblazing French EDM producer worked backwards. Instead of starting with the beats — his standard approach over his three-decade DJ career — he began with vocals and live instruments, such as piano and guitar, and produced around them. The result is an emotional album of radio-friendly hits featuring star vocalists and full-bodied choruses that, when heard together, feel like a moment of reflection from his view at the top.

The album has been billed as Guetta’s attempt at reinvention, but aside from the analog approach, it doesn’t feel like wholly new territory. The 47-year-old artist is widely credited for leading EDM’s mainstream crossover with his late 2000’s LPs Pop Life and One Love, and this feels like his most pop-centric album yet. The recipe might be different, but the ingredients are largely the same.

BT – These Hopeful Machines

And most of those places will absolutely adore the infectious pop-come-breakbeat breakdowns of These Hopeful Machines. Gone are the experimental qualities of BT’s past – the sweeping orchestrations, trademarked stutters, and IDM breaks – in their place are driving club anthems, soaring vocals, and a compositional structure that forgoes the unique traits of Binary Universe for glo-sticks and addictive appeal. This isn’t so much intelligent dance music as it is dance music that’s intelligent; the stutters are still here but in more of a breaks application, and the glitch-laden nature of BT’s work is (as always) everpresent.

In contrast, “Rose of Jericho” brings back fond memories of its experimental precursor: glitching off-tempo beats, phase changes, volume swells, and nearly wet ambient atmospherics abound. “Le Nocturne De Lumiere” acts as an IDM representative on the second disc as well – but this time from a more brooding perspective, post-something in its appeal. And this conversely brings to mind a serious detractor.

Underworld – Barking

Barking inhabits an odd place: half-dolorous electro-pop, half-affirming sunnyside jams. You can attribute this to some of the help they had: Underworld farmed Barking‘s tracks out to various producers, and it shows. “Hamburg Hotel” contains hints of Appleblim‘s tense nighttime wandering, and Paul van Dyk is all over “Diamond Jigsaw“. These “collaborations” seem like a better marketing tool than a musical one, however, as Barking‘s sonic variance is truthfully no greater than that of most Underworld albums.

Underworld receive a lot of credit for being a great albums band in a singles genre, but the lukewarm reception their last two albums received glossed over the fact that each has housed one or two great tracks. So Barking stays the course, with the added prospect of a fitter, happier Underworld on the horizon. It’s about time.