Was it Hip-Hop you were making?

It was more Grime. I did a bit of hip hop when I moved to London, but I started out in grime.

What kind of Garage did you listen to growing up?

I got given tapes from my brother and he put me on to people like Artful Dodger, MJ Cole etc. Those are the producers I knew at the time and I thought ‘ah this is sick’, they were my main influences because I was listening to more DJ sets than tunes. So most of the time it was me hearing songs and desperately trying to find out what they were. The last few years have been quite mad for me, as when I'm looking for music for my DJ sets, I'll have like 50 tabs open on YouTube and come across all this stuff I never managed to find back then. When you find that tune you've been looking for, for so long, it's so sweet!

It feels like garage has never really been unpopular, at least not maligned in the way that say dubstep was, but even so, it seemed that people generally stopped making it and there was very little of it coming out for a long time. Is that something you noticed?

Yeah, there was a point where it didn’t die out exactly, but there weren't any new producers making anything. With most scenes you have like a generational switch. A new breed of producers continuously making it, or adding their own taste to it, and I feel that's what garage lacked for a long while. That was between 2005-2011 and it kind of went a bit left. Garage was a dirty word in that period. I still listened to Garage, but it was strange. I feel like the genre always meant something to people, just there wasn't much of a scene because there wasn't a constant stream of garage songs coming out. It became kind of a nostalgic genre.

Then also, around 2010 there was the future garage thing. With Burial and that, how did that fit in with what you do?

People talked about it for a while and then stopped calling it that. It was kind of weird like, post garage, post dubstep, future garage and all that. You don't want to get too much into genres and start giving loads of technical names. That period was interesting because it was two-step and it still had that influence but was more of a left-field sound, it went down the darker route.

It definitely wasn't party music!

Yeah, I guess it was kind of like what lo-fi house is now, its the equivalent of what that was then. It’s more, not depressing, but moody. Its very moody. But I always like that. UK Bass music was great, DeadBoy and those kind of producers and that whole period of bass producers was amazing. Because you saw the splits between, producers infusing dubstep with grime over two step but at 140bpm. It was really interesting.

They called it future garage, but it wasn't really garage at all. I bring it up, because the music you make is kind of a modern take on garage.

I feel like what I really do is try and take the best of part of old garage and put it into what I can make today. It's taking all those elements and giving it a new feel. Instead of just regurgitating what someone else has done years ago. If you do that it, it will always sound like a cheap imitation.

What do you use to produce? Do you play any instruments?

I used to play keyboard in like Year 7, when your parents would make you learn an instrument. I wish I picked it up properly because now I'm getting back into it, I'm using it for arranging and playing keys, but I'm not a good player. Production wise I use FL Studio to program my beats and when I'm recording I use Logic.

Is it much of a jump between FL Studio and Logic?

I have to use FL Studio to make my drums, it's just so much easier. I can make sick drums so quickly in FL. Once I got the melody down - I think the melody should always dictate the groove. So usually I’d make the melody once the cords and the bass are down. Then I’d build drums around that and that would take me like max 5 or 10 minutes. And then I’d have the structure there. I feel music is like a sandwich. The melodies and the drums are the bread, then the groove is the filling, then the other bits are the mayonnaise, the bacon, the little sprinkles of onion. It all fits together nicely.

How do you go about finding collaborators?

I try to get people who you wouldn’t really expect to hear on a garage song because I like merging parts of other UK cultures/genres and making something new. I feel like, all the old garage songs, the best ones, are RnB songs, like making RnB songs in a two-step pattern. That's also what I try to do in all the official remixes I do. I like to make it so you're hearing these artists from other genres do a garage track. Like the J Hus remix, it just sounds like J Hus on an actual garage tune. I feel like I try and give everything soul, everything speaks to me, everything feels ‘UK’.

What’s the craziest thing that has happened to you since you started off.... a ‘I can’t believe this happening’ kind of feeling?

I’ll have to see, Ermmmm...... I played Love Saves The Day in Bristol last year and it was the two-year anniversary of my manager starting to manage me. I was DJing 8-9pm, it was a hometown show, the sun was setting, it was perfect. I remember playing one particular tune, and honestly, I'm not even that emotional, but I felt it in my chest! I could feel the tears streaming down my eyes and I was like 'Woah!'. I fully froze in the moment and thought 'this is something I'm doing and this is my job'. It was a really great feeling. Every time I hear that tune, I can't even listen to it any more!

What tune was it?

It’s a tune by Tortured Soul. It’s a remix by Ethan Raindrops. It’s called "I Might Do Something Wrong". It's a really minimal tune, but the intro alone is emotional it has a massive build, the drums come in and it's really almost like tribal and trance, the bass comes in and rings and that's when it hit me, then the chords come back and it's mad, it's crazy.

If you're playing a festival and the DJ on before you plays one of your songs. How do you feel about that?

Ahaha! That hasn't happened to me yet. For me personally the thing about music is that there are so many songs out there, you don't have to play my song because I'm probably going to play it. If it did happen, I guess i’d take it as a sign of respect, but it's just one of those things... Well put it this way, I’d accept an apology!

It depends on who plays it as well, let's say if it was EZ - would that be ok?

If he did it, he would definitely get a nod of approval. I don’t think he’d ever do it though. I’d never play an EZ tune before EZ. DJs need to know what they’re doing. So like if I was playing before EZ, I wouldn’t get everyone all pumped and stuff, as he’s the headliner and I'm the support. It would be all about building the crowd for EZ. And that goes for all DJs in general. I think that the art of warming up has been lost. Knowing where you are in the lineup and knowing how to DJ for your appropriate time. You see some DJs playing all these belters and it's like 10 or 11. It kind of defeats the point of the night and ruins it for everyone there.

Why do you think that is?

I think it's because everyone has access to being a DJ now, it's that narcissistic side of it, ‘I'm a DJ I want to play this tune at this time because I’m a DJ’. I understand they're eager and want to do their thing, but still. That side of DJing, that art has been lost. They forget that the night doesn't revolve around them. The line-up is created for a reason and people are put on certain times for a reason. It’s about building and understanding the dynamics of how the night works.

I think we've reached the end of the tour. Just finally, where is the number one place to party apart from London or Bristol?

Paris! There’s a producer called Bellair, he’s only 19 years old - one of the most exciting I’ve heard, really cool house producer, kind of reminds me of Kerri with the groove in the tune. I play a lot of his stuff in my sets. There’s a lot of French house I discovered on YouTube. So I’ll make up for being mean to it earlier and say Paris - don’t hate guys!

Conducta will play Basstone alongside Chris Lorenzo, Monki, Taiki Nulight and Vocoder on Saturday 26th May, get tickets and more info here.