I'm excited. Really excited.

Cause tomorrow I'm going to, in my AGT Rave Cru guise, be DJing at Heaven, in support of 65daysofstatic. I'm mostly excited cause 65 are probably the people that I respect most in music right now, as well as being very treasured friends and a night with the chaps is always a laugh (plus they're going to be playing lots of new material which will be something to get excited about). But I'm also excited cause there's a funny full-circle thing about doing this gig, at this time.

It was 1994 that I first moved to London from the small North-Eastern rural village that I'd spent my frustrated teenage years in, returning home in many ways, after eight long, formative years in the North East. In short, I had a lot to get out of my system and, shaking off the standard grunge rebellion that fitted me awkwardly at the time (good tunes though - Pixies have never been bettered), my colleagues at the Empire Cinema introduced me to dance music.

The story goes a little like this - one night, we're cleaning up the massive, 1,500 capacity cinema, after the Virgin Club Awards have been held there. Someone finds a load of aftershow tickets at the Hanover Grand. We rock up - it's mostly shit. I hate the music (that insipid branch of "funky house" that still bores bars the country over). Shit that is, until H steals an entire crate of Virgin Vodka from behind the bar and we proceed to have the best night of our lives.

A week later, barely over our hangovers, we decide to do it all again and, rather than go to the usual boring pub, one of our more enlightened colleagues invites us to his regular haunt, a central London gay club called Heaven.

Again, cutting a long, epic story short, I go to the club (it's a Friday night session called Garage), someone puts something small and white in my mouth and I share a moment of epiphany at the hands of DJ Blu Peter and, I later find out, Cygnus X's The Orange Theme. After this, it's techno, electronica, ambient, minimalism (I first heard Steve Reich at a back to mine after one of these sessions) and pretty much everything that now shapes my musical output.

I continued going to this night religiously for 3 years, before other (Sunday) Social's called me away and time passed. It's funny to think of things going full circle - that almost exactly 15 years later, with a wife and child and my very own records released, I'll be taking to the decks in that very club. It's going to be a moment of utter nostalgia for me. Although I'm not really in touch with anyone from those days, those nights were to shape me so completely and utterly, it's quite daunting going back. Phaedra, Trel, Max, Adrian, H, Didde, Steve - wherever you are, this one will be for you. I will, of course, be playing The Orange Theme.

:o)