2009 was an interesting year musically. Many different genres of electronic music from the past twenty years served as a source of influence to the musicians of today. Producers were allowed to finally break free of the shackle and chains of sub-genre elitism that held them back for so many years. It was great to hear styles like baltimore club, dubstep, and indie/electro mature and solidify in 2009. It was pretty tough to compile a comprehensive list of the best tracks from atop the mountain of aural goodness that came out this past year.

The list I’m about to present is not at all a definitive “greatest hits” list of the final year of the ‘oughties; however the songs here are probably the ones we will associate 2009 with the most down the road.

So without further ado, I present to you, the tracks of 2009 we won’t forget.

Oxia: Sun Step EP

Olivier Raymond has been a long standing house and downtempo producer since the mid-1990s. The past few years have been particularly good to him, releasing several tracks on popular tech house labels including Kompakt, Tsuba, and Intec. However his Sun Step EP, released this past fall on 8bit, is giving this journeyman a bit of serious prime time play. Not only were these tracks a permenant fixture in Beatport’s top 10 for the last three months of 2009, but there is little novelty factor in either of them. The title track is an upbeat affair; it’s marimba loop glides like a skimboarder at a sunny beach in the low tide. “Whole Life” on the flip relies much more heavily on vocals and actually reminds me of the Nightcrawlers’ “Push The Feeling On” with the 2009 production varnish on the surface to help make it shine even more. This single definitely deserves recognition in the top 10.

Fresh: Heavyweights / Helter Skelter

There have been a lot of naysayers this past year who think that drum & bass music, along with the scene behind it, is in dire straits. However I can safely assure them that they are wrong, and there have been a variety of fresh sounds that have florished within the genre this past year. Utilizing the “less is more” ethos, many artists are using a minimal number of samples and forcing limitations around where and how they are utilized to create loads of empty space to give the song breathing room. All the while, keeping the funk and staying true to the breaks we have known to love, such as the amen. A complete 360-degree turn from the big room/”wall of sound” that he and Pendulum helped formulate several years ago, DJ Fresh came correct on this single, released on Shy FX’s well respected label Digital Soundboy. “Heavyweight” literally sounds like it was pressed straight from a dusty old 1996 DAT sitting at the bottom of Roni Size or DJ Die’s studio in Bristol- the beats are just beautiful, every element is subtle, and the bass gives woofer cones a workout without becoming overbearing. It’s the best head nod I’ve ever heard to the classic Full Cycle sound! Helter Skelter is a bit overshadowed by “Heavyweight”, but with it’s amen break and attention to detail, it holds it’s own. Drum & bass isn’t going anywhere thanks to beautiful music like this.

Floating Points: Vaccuum EP

I don’t really know what to say about this three track compilation other than the fact that it’s just lovely. Easily one of the best deep house releases to come out in a long time. The title track builds nicely and feels like it coasts smoothly in mid-air, a perfect track for a long drive on a mid summers day. Beautiful pads and densely layered synths throughout. The quality control on the two tracks on side 2 of the single are just as good. “Truly” slows things down a little bit and is a sparse affair, and includes a funky rhodes riff and a drum kit that is heavily jazz-influenced. Just like the title track, the synths become layered and more complex with the passing of time. Argonaut slows it down even more and is almost entirely jazz-infleunced, from the hard bop bassline and rhythmic rhodes all the way up to the organic keys laid down that change and build the entire way through. I honestly know little else about Floating Points but it wouldn’t surprise me if they had some sort of live act in the works as this EP definitely has a livetronica/jam band feel to it. Wonderful music.

DJ Sega: Robot Club Rock

The six track baltimore club release “The Brick Bandits” included floor fillers by well known Philly DJ Sega, along with Tameil and Rob 3. Easily the most popular track to come from this EP was the opener: a short piece by Sega titled “Robot Club Rock”. This tune got a lot of club play from DJ’s during the first half of the year. It’s probably a popular track due to it’s simplicity- the main rock riff is fairly energetic and would make itself perfectly at home within the opening level of a video game or an action scene of a movie. And although vocoded robot vocals tend to be a bit overdone, especially in the world of electro, they’re used in a more subdued way here to keep it from overtly competing against the other components. Sega’s been on a bit of a hiatus for the second half of 2009, so one can only guess as to what sort of monsters he’s been masterminding in the studio over the past several months.

The Bloody Beetroots & Steve Aoki: Warp

Although I don’t consider myself to be extremely knowledgeable about electro or indie music, I think even most country music afficiandos have probably heard “Warp” at this point. Both Aoki and the Beetroots have been cranking out a flurry of music this past year, and because their sounds are so compatible it’s only natural that they decided to collab on this piece. In Warp’s brief three minutes we get two major build-ups, an early 1990s influenced hoover lead line, and an arsenal of synths. Bartenders probably loved this track because it gave them a break from working for a few minutes while every other living soul in the club would run out to the dancefloor as soon as the infamous “1 2 3 4” countdown kicked in. There were VERY few parties I didn’t hear this track (or one of the several remixes that were floating about) played over the past year.

Major Lazer: Pon De Floor

As soon as the opening drum rolls of Pon De Floor hit the ears, it’s all over. In 2007 and 2008, Diplo proved to the world that he has the capacity to bring dance music to the mainstream. In 2009 he did just that with his Major Lazer side project, bringing house, hip hop, reggae, and dubstep together. His formula was actually powerful enough to bypass the filters and political bullshit required to earn some play time on select FM radio stations in the U.S.! Although not a radio fixture, Pon De Floor was hammered in the clubs and served as an anthem this past summer. The screaming high pitched lead synth is immediately recognizeable. In fact, Pon De Floor is one of those tunes that even if you think you haven’t heard it before, as soon as you hear the lead line you’ll know right away if in fact you were wrong in your assumption. Vybz Kartel definitely deserve credit for fulfilling vocal duties here as well.

Deadmau5 & Kaskade: I Remember

This is a song I have to include because of it’s melancholy nature. Many people had a difficult year in 2009, and often times the stress of everyday life can be channeled very well through the power of music. Deadmau5 incorporated the vocals of Kaskade to create what is probably his most compelling piece of work yet: a 10-minute opus reminding the listener to remember the past while not being afraid to move forward to the future. Without getting too sentimental about it, many hope to see 2010 as a new beginning, so no track that came out this past year is more appropriate to this mindset and attitude than “I Remember”. The remixes for this track, including a dubstep version by Caspa and a drum & bass version by J Majik and Wickaman, also proved to be extremely popular within these respective genres.

Claude Von Stroke: Aundy

Fresh off the release of his first full length album, a Fabric Live mix, a relentless tour all around the globe, and a Top 100 DJ listing in pretty much every electronic music publication known to man, Claude Von Stroke makes it all look so easy. How he is able to craft the ideas he comes up with when he is not touring, running his record label (Dirtybird), throwing events in San Francisco, and spending time with his wife and young son, is simply beyond me! It’s a little known fact that Von Stroke got his start in the scene around a decade ago as a drum and bass DJ before venturing into a slower BPM range later on. In tracks like “Aundy”, it’s nice to see that he isn’t putting the knowledge he learned from drum and bass to waste. With pretty much every writer calling Aundy a compilation where “LTJ Bukem meets house”, I honestly can’t agree more. The same 808-modeled bassline and searing multi-textural pads that made Danny Bukem so famous with his Logical Progression releases in the mid to late 1990s are perfectly ciphoned into the house formula on this piece. With a scant few number of vinyl copies of this single selling out in minutes in record shops, Aundy on wax now commands a very high price in the second hand market (trust me, I looked!) Thankfully, you can download the MP3 in most digital stores or purchase his album on CD, which includes this track.

Joy Orbison: Hyph Mngo / Wet Look

I honestly can’t even shut up at parties when I talk about how damn good this two-track single from Joy Orbison is. He is easily one of my favorite new artists in 2009, and although everything I have heard come out of his studio is top quality, this single takes the cake. Giles Peterson has been rinsing this on Radio 1, and it’s gained support from many house DJ’s in addition to pretty much any dubstep DJ with a pulse! The rising pads from Hyph Mngo get me every single time, and the light smattering of sampled vocals from Janet Jackson on the afformentioned track, along with Mobb Deep on Wet Look, ground these songs to keep your average clubgoer in a familiar territory. Add to that the fact that these songs make for great listening both inside the club and in the comfort of your own home, and you’ve got yourself something far beyond the throwaway, instant-impact compositions that have littered dance music over the past decade. Pretty sure I’ll still be listening to it ten years from now.

La Roux: Going in For The Kill (Skream’s Let’s Get Ravey Remix)

The vast field of dance music, littered in a multitude of different terains that are constantly evolving, made it pretty challenging to compile the ten best pieces to come out in 2009. However, I think it goes without saying that there is one song we can unanimously remember the past year by more than anything else. Mainstream London was pretty keen to catch on to the vocal talents of La Roux, and Skream’s remix sent the world a not-so-subtle hint that dubstep music was a force to be reckoned with as we approach the clean palette of a new decade. The build, the ever-so-memorable lyrics, the unconventional drop (which doesn’t even happen until about three quarters of the way in), and clever use of the amen break made crowds across all different musical tastes go absolutely nuts this past year. “Going in For The Kill” not only crossed genres and attracted interests from people of differing musical backgrounds, but was a perfect representation of how many artists this past year experimented with utilizing components and samples from multiple musical backgrounds to derive their work. And regardless of the fact that it was originally given away as a free MP3 download, the song still ended up managing to sell over a MILLION copies when hard copy vinyl and CD versions were released on the market several months later!

As the title hints at, the ones we hope to remember, aka the underrated or slept-on ones, will be covered in a write-up to come later on this week. Watch out for it!