"It's probably why I haven't got a girlfriend..."

How are you finding being your own boss?

It's great. I mean, I can do what I want. I'm quite hard on myself, so if I'm not doing tracks I feel like I'm wasting time. It's probably why I haven't got a girlfriend, 'cos I go pretty mental if I'm not making tracks [laughs]. If I go on holiday I think I can go for a week, maximum, before I have to make stuff. It's quite cathartic, so even if nothing happens I'll loop some stuff and go [sighs with relief] 'Aaaaah', have a cup of tea. I don't want it to ever feel like it's a job.

Do you have a home studio?

Kind of. I'm staying at my aunt's at the moment, a place called Coggeshall in Essex. It's about 10 miles from Colchester. It's a really little village. I went there over Christmas to look after their dog, while they went away. So it was just me and the dog for 10 days and I made 20 tracks, which was good. But now they're back my studio is in a really cold conservatory, so it's really hard to get in there and do stuff, 'cos it's cold, and I do need my own space. But I haven't really got a studio, I've got an MPC, a laptop and a really crap mixer that was stolen from a rave in the '90s.

I was living just off Shoreditch High Street but I can't afford it, it's crazy. I can get a flat somewhere else for the same price. I really love London, it's great, but being away from London is good 'cos it's kind of like a holiday when you come back. Being in London is full on, all the time, especially if you're living right in the centre; you go out, see people, get drunk, get mashed up, go home, do it again, get up, go to work early....such a fast city, people on it all the time.

Are you from London originally?

Yeah, Peckham. And then we moved to Essex when I was about 14. I was growing up listening to Capleton and Simpleton and early quite dodgy ragga records. And then I moved to Chelmsford with my family and people were talking about Pulp, Blur and I'd never heard of them, it was pretty funny. I started making tracks 'cos I didn't fit into anything that was going on.

Where does the interest in Japanese culture come from?

Probably from watching 'Akira', and then working out that all the really good cartoons were from Japan, and all the computer games. I went there when I was 19 for a holiday and loved it. Since then I've been kind of obsessed. I had quite a good record collection, quite a lot of early hip-hop stuff- I sold it all to study Japanese for a year in London.