The chart-topping DJ is releasing a photobook to commemorate 40 years in music. In this extract, he discusses the rise of big beat, a genre that fused acid house with the ‘anarchic rebellion’ of punk, and propelled him into the big time
Most artists struggle with the “difficult” second album. Not wanting to sound big-headed, but this was not the case for me. The early success, especially of tunes such as Going Out of My Head and Everybody Needs a 303, had crystalised in my mind where all of this was going. I knew what was turning people on and had kinda cracked the formula of how the next album should sound. The formula was: breakbeats from my love of hip-hop, the anarchic rebellion of punk, the energy of acid house and hooks from the pop music I grew up on. I had all the thrift store samples built into a library for audio collage, and a club to test out new tunes.
This new movement in music so far had no name to pigeonhole it. We, and journalists, tried various options such as tripno, Brit hop, and amyl house, but the name that it landed with came from my club – the Big Beat Boutique. We felt an enormous collective pride in that. House music was named after the Warehouse Club in Chicago, garage music was named after the Paradise Garage in New York, and now big beat was named after our night at a little scout hut in Brighton.
