'00s Dance

The first decade of the 21st century is three-quarters over, but this overview of the post-millennial club soundscape packs enough juice for a thousand years of grooves and moves, from Kylie’s sexy-smooth “Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” through Daft Punk’s mellow electro-funk (“Digital Love”), to Fatboy Slim’s mantric invocation to the raving masses, “Right Here, Right Now.” If God is a DJ, let the worship continue in Next Steps.

You can slip into some of these grooves casually, like you’re easing into a Jacuzzi, but others impel you to hit the ground running, and stoke you into a hot funk before you have time to draw breath: one such is “Voodoo People” by the Prodigy, which puts your brain in a blender and sends electric groove pulses through your legs; another is M.I.A.’s electro-tribal “Galang.” Whirl like a dervish into the beat vortex of our Deep Cuts.

Take your preconceived notions of dance music and refilter them through the refracting prism of Phonqiue (feat. Die Elfen): 2004’s “The Red Dress” delivers a steady pulse of robo-Germanic freakiness without ever sacrificing the boogie. Belgium’s Ian Van Dahl takes a more direct route to dance-floor euphoria with “Castles in the Sky” — an angelic vocal plus a warm sea of Balearic synth equals genius.

This starter decade of the 21st century — the zeroes, the noughts, call it what you will — has mashed up enough styles and grooves to leave our great dance-floor nation dazed, confused, and blissed-out for years to come. Benny Benassi (“Satisfaction”) has plugged us directly into his super-charged grid of electroclash, where we’ve begged him to crank up the voltage on his sonic cattle-prod; Mylo has seduced us into believing that the seeds of the future can be found in the Latin-disco exotica of Miami Sound Machine; and Fedde le Grand has given Detroit house a shiny Euro upgrade. Bangin’.