So many people I was at school with have all ended up being musicians and putting records out.

I find that people in American are often much more purist. If you're into hip-hop, you're totally into hip-hop - you wear the uniform, that's all you listen to. If you're a goth, you're totally a goth - you've got, like, 4,000 piercings, black hair, you really go for it.

I've always explored things that people find a bit more freakish, like free jazz, and I'd gotten to a point where the live music I was making was really hectic and turning much more confrontational. So when I started working on Everything Ecstatic, that was very normal for me. I think it was a departure, but people read it as an escape from something, whereas every record I do is, I feel, a departure.

After putting out quite a few albums, there's a feeling of why make another? I was trying to make something that was an album experience.

It's such a normal thing for a dance producer to make music and try it out in the club, but that was relatively new to me. I wanted to make a good album that felt like it had a point.

I like putting a lot of personal touches in the music.

When drum'n'bass happened, when the two-step/garage thing happened, there was a chart smash every week; it operated on the underground and the pinnacle of pop mainstream at the same time.