Renegades of Jazz is the alter ego of German DJ David Hanke, whose blending of breakbeats, a distorted big band, rap vocals and electronica to create something billed to bring jazz back to the dancefloor would already be an unusual combination even before the addition of John Milton’s biblical epic Paradise Lost. The result is a brooding and initially rather puzzling release that after several listens reveals itself as addictive and original.

It's an understatement to say that the massive revival of fortunes of club music in the 2010s has had its ups and downs. It's been a time of chaotic glut, of excess and spectacle – thanks particularly to the American “EDM” (electronic dance music) wave, which has seen egos, assholery and unnecessary fireworks that make the 90s UK superstar DJ era seem like a gentle Sunday afternoon stroll in the park – but also of diversification and fertility.

The thought of attending a dance music conference in Amsterdam frankly gave me the creeping horrors. I'd never been to Amsterdam Dance Event before, and the combination of DJ egos, business hustling and relentless partying through hundreds of club venues in a renownedly liberal city presented so many opportunities for both boredom and complete catastrophe, it just seemed like a fool's errand. But this, of course, wasn't fair.

When drum'n'bass emerged from hardcore rave's interactions with London's pirate radio culture, 20-odd years ago, it created some of the most radical grassroots music ever to come out of the British Isles. It came in such a white heat explosion of underground, transforming repeatedly and rapidly through different iterations its first few years, that nobody could have predicted that it would reach a commercial high-point two decades on.

In a two-decade ripple effect typical of pop culture, there’s been a recent spate of interest in 1990s jungle. This was frantic bass-led breakbeat club music that led to the more media-friendly term “drum'n'bass” which, in turn, led indirectly to UK garage, grime and globe-conquering dubstep. DJs such as Shy FX and DJ Hype have maintained their careers and the spotlight is now creeping back towards them. Another player from those days is London’s Rebel MC, AKA Michael West, AKA Conquering Lion, AKA Congo Natty.

Alison Moyet is not just one of the great voices in pop, she's one of the most likeable figures. A brilliantly no-nonsense character, she consistently skewers music industry pomposity, laughs in the face of the expectations the world has of female artists, and generally does precisely what she wants while retaining an abnormally acute sense of the absurdness of it all.

It's a truism in dance music culture that “everyone's a DJ nowadays”. It's generally meant in a flip, pejorative sense – suggesting that cheap technology means every man Jack and his dog can put a sequence of records together and the role is somehow devalued. But it hides a rather more positive truth, which is that dance culture is intrinsically participative, that the line between industry and punters is so blurred as to be non-existent, that those punters truly are easily as important as the hallowed DJs they look up to.

In an on-point attempt to shake things up a bit, Artsdesk writer Joe Muggs suggested the new Squarepusher album should be reviewed by someone other than an old raver. There were, unfortunately, no takers so you’re stuck with me… an old raver. Then again, look on the bright side, look at this way - I’m fully qualified! Thus, although I cannot tell whether you’ll enjoy this if you wasted the last decade dredging slowly from The Strokes to Adele, if you revel in the sound of electronic trickery twisting your synapses inside out – wahay! – you’re home dry.

I first heard Zed Bias's Biasonic Hot Sauce – Birth of the Nanocloud last autumn. He may have been one of the key players in the London-centric sound of UK garage, but he was never of that scene. Based in Milton Keynes through the first phase of his career, he releases through a Brighton label and is now resident in Manchester.