I left.”

Leaving London for the arguably more civilised culture of Berlin, with a clutch of tracks written but not mastered for the long-awaited follow-up to London Zoo, he found a new perspective on life, not least because he was about to become a father for the first time. But even though the rarefied creative atmosphere of Berlin acted as a palliative, he still had struggles to contend with. A snapped Achilles tendon meant that “during the mixdown sessions for this record, my girlfriend was literally having to push me in a wheelchair to the studio every day... I was actually in a great deal of pain.”

Although he describes his first year as “an epic adventure,” it is still, he says, “far too early, really, for me to havegeographically more or less centred around the same place, looking for the same thing in music. It was mad exciting, when it first began. When I was first meeting people like Mala, Loefah, Coki and Kode9, I thought it was a really intriguing area, because it echoed things I'd been involved in for years, and yet they weren't aware of any of the shit I was drawing on – except for Kode9, who was responsible for introducing me to a lot of people in that area. He was also responsible for me making tracks at 140bpm. I didn't used to give a shit about the tempo, but he asked me to do tracks at 140 because he wanted to play some of the stuff I'd been responsible for.”