**What was your first rave and how did it impact you? **

I’d rather talk about my last rave. Odyssey Soundsystem born from a long lineage of illegal free party rave crews. They’ve started their own one day festival. They move 2,000 tickets without a line up, fair price entry, fair price drinks, no sponsors. The production involved is huge – visuals and sound that rattles your guts. It’s great to see something like this operate outside the framework of bastard corporate one day London festivals that should die on a skip. Shouts to Oddy, Brains Kan, Equality, Exodus, Faktion, VOH, Project Storm, AZ1, Massika.

How does music inspire your creativity in the other things you do?

Our studio is called Maison de Bang Bang. The soundsystem we built is the beating heart of the space. Technics 1200s and a Formula Sound mixer, 12-inch drivers hang from the ceiling, and a 15-inch sub is wedged between boxes of stock. All our work is inspired by the sounds. If I’m writing or reading there’s always music on. I just wrote the foreword for Nasty Nema’s book, Ghost’s in the Machine: The Hauntology of Graffiti and Rave Culture, 1990 – 2010. I was listening to DJ Spanish Fly — Unfinished Business.

If Sports Banger was a rave mixtape, which one would it be and why?

Probably Mindwarp in Bits, recorded in Colchester with DJ’s Sy, Slipmatt, Ellis Dee and Ratty. It was the first mixtape my brother got me for my 10th birthday. Hardcore will never die.

**Has running your record label Heras changed your understanding of the music industry in any way? **

In the music industry, just like fashion, mediocrity is the majority.

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