Deficit Of Wonder, Sam Kerridge's new EP on James Ruskin's Blueprint Records, opens with that most orthodox sound: a 4/4 kick drum. Its smooth momentum doesn't last long. Almost immediately "Operation Neptune" is capsized by a sudden, violent swell of noise and is, thereafter, buffeted by huge, growing waves of sonic brutality. By the end, straight club techno has been dragged under, drowned, smashed into pieces.

"Operation Neptune" may be unusually energetic, but the sound is unmistakably Kerridge's. Over the last two years, across a handful of EPs and a lauded album, A Fallen Empire on Downwards, the 28 year-old has shaped a distinct aesthetic. He takes dub techno, generally slows it to a crawl, smothers it in distortion and drones, and in the process creates tracks that owe as much to the monolithic physicality of Sun O))) or Pink Floyd's early psychedelic "happenings" as they do modern techno. It's a compelling sound that, while apparently bleak and unforgiving, is propelling Kerridge beyond the experimental underground. As well as the Contort parties he co-promotes in Berlin—two of which are scheduled as part of this year's Berlin Atonal activities—he has played across Europe and recently returned from a tour of East Asia. He is, in many ways, noise-techno's one-to-watch.

You were DJing in your teens and producing music from the age of 16, but I presume the Sam Kerridge of A Fallen Empire wasn't born fully-formed. What was your musical evolution?

When I first got into DJing I was playing American house, a bit of jungle, drum & bass and techno but, eventually, I just couldn't find the right records. I'd like certain elements of certain tracks, but not where they went. Nearly every piece of music would be like that. I got into producing to make music I wanted to hear. I bought a laptop, decided Logic was the way forward and taught myself. Even now, I'm quite disconnected from other people's music. Obviously I buy records and listen to them for DJing, but I don't sit at home listening to music. I take producing seriously and you can overload yourself. You can start to sound like other people or it kind of infects your way of working.

Unusually, you have always been around clubbing. As a kid your parents would take you to raves with them. What was their scene?

In Devon there was a place called the Lazy House, an old abandoned mansion that was taken over by a free-party crowd. You had to be in on the scene, you'd go to the local record shops, they'd tell you when the next party was, that kind of thing. This was my dad more than my mum; his mates properly got him into it. My mum would go and visit her family in Manchester, me and my sister would stay with my dad and, instead of not going out, he'd take us with him [laughing]. But my mum used to be heavily into it as well. They were both really into house music and still are now.

Samuel Kerridge

More generally, your dad sounds like he was very important in your musical upbringing.

He'd have the latest mixtapes in the car and it would always be on the radio at home. When I was little he'd take me into record shops if he was finding out about parties or catching up with friends, so I was going into record shops from an early age and seeing DJs. He was very influential. Then, at school in Manchester, I got in with a crowd that were into partying, so we were attempting to get into club nights when we were 13. House and techno nights, too, not your local '80s disco. We used to get rejected from Sankeys every week, at the time when all that Tribal Sessions stuff was massive.

Did your love of rock music—Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, Sun O)))—come later?

When I got my decks I was into electronic music. But when I was 15, 16 I started to listen to my dad and really take on board all the older bands, back-tracking, and watching old re-runs of [vintage BBC rock show] The Old Grey Whistle Test. The attitude those bands had really inspired me. People have fucking lost it, you know? I definitely took a lot from Pink Floyd's pure experimentation. They didn't give a fuck. A lot of music journalists slated them but they didn't buckle. They just did what they wanted to.

Fast-forward a few years and you are working as a joiner and creating music as a hobby. When did you feel that you had finally hit on your sound?

Until about 21, I was messing about, DJing, going out to parties and the football, getting fucked, as young lads do. Then I got my own place in Salford and, after that, moved to Warrington, rented a studio up the road for about 50 quid a week, and started to take it seriously, going to the studio, getting tracks down, working on it in my spare time. The basics of the first EP [Auris Interna] were made then. Not that I necessarily thought it was going anywhere. At the time, my mates would be like, 'What the fuck is this? Are you having a laugh? It's shit.' But it was an impulse. I had to do it.

You've talked about wanting your music to be distinctive. How conscious a process has that been? Do you refine your music, stripping out common sounds? Or was it a natural evolution to this clearly differentiated sound?

It's a natural thing. If I'm making a track, the obvious next step would be, "I wonder what it'd sound like with a 4/4 kick behind it?" but it just sounds wrong to me. It's not as conscious as me thinking, "I need to be different," or "It can't be techno because everyone's doing that," it's just that nothing sounds right to me like that. "Standard" tracks do not interest me at all. There's no pull. I wouldn't want to work on it or hear it.

I have made tracks with 4/4 kicks, but only when a track needed to sound like that. With "Operation Neptune" specifically, I just had the idea and it got more and more fucked-up. [Blueprint label boss] James Ruskin played it in Tresor a few weeks ago and on that kind of soundsystem it's fucking crazy. People don't know what to do. At first, it's got that siren in the background and this 4/4 kick, and they think, "Oh, it's a techno track," and then it just comes in waves of noise. It's so powerful. I love it.

To me, it's similar to outsider art. I'm coming to music with no knowledge whatsoever. If I want to put a reverb on a kick drum I will. Why not? It sounds fucking awesome. And who are you to tell me what to do? It is what it is. It's an extension of me; I'm doing it for myself. If people like it, wicked.

In its packaging, track titles, the way it sounded even, A Fallen Empire was shrouded in dystopian dread. Yet, you bridle at being labelled "dark." Why?

I hate that people have to label it. I think "dark" conjures up a negative perspective before you listen to the music. To me, it's powerful music that in the end is very uplifting. The track titles are kind of tongue-in-cheek; they're not something I take too seriously.

That said, you chose a picture of a soldier being shot in the throat as the album's artwork. I think most people would presume your work comes from a place of, if not anger, despair.

I can be quite an aggressive person at times, and maybe that's reflected in the music. To me, it just feels right.

If you go beyond that surface aggression, there's a liberating exhilaration in the way you take music to such extremes. It's spiritually cleansing, almost. Do you recognise that?

That's the word: liberation. When I play my music live I feel liberated, and when I'm making it, it is definitely expelling something from me. It doesn't offer instant gratification. But if you give yourself over to it, really get tranced out by it, I think it's completely rewarding. That's how I am in the studio. I'll get lost on a certain track or a certain element of a track that could be going in a loop for 30 bars, for eight or nine hours at a time, and I really zone out to that. That's my kick. That's the enjoyment.

Conversely, are you surprised by how the melodic elements of your music are overlooked? Similar to My Bloody Valentine, you tune and manipulate the most grotesque noises in ways that are almost hooky.

It's funny, my dad came to watch me at fabric and said he was stood in the crowd humming the tunes. Some people listen to it and to them it's outright screaming noise, and they don't delve deeper to find what's going on in there. I love experimental noise but you can't beat a good melody.

What kind of reaction have you been provoking, live? And what are your ideal circumstances to play in?

You always want to play for a crowd who are going to appreciate your music, or know what they're going to be listening to. But, at the same time, when I played fabric—which is not a gig I thought I'd ever get, especially with the lower tempo stuff—the room was packed, perhaps half fans, half not, for the whole time. I started off slow, started weird, built it up towards the end, and there was a lot of cheering. It seemed really well received. At the moment, I do think things are turning, that people want a bit more out of music. It's good that at some of the club nights I play, they're trying to incorporate acts like myself and others into standard techno nights, bringing in a different element.

If people dance is that a nice bonus? Does it matter?

At the earlier gigs people were engaged in it, but wouldn't move. But in the last six months people have been freaking out, even to the slower stuff. Personally, I can't keep still when I'm playing. It's a massive experience for me to hear it that loud, in a way that you could never replicate in a studio.

In your DJ sets, there are periods where the beats drop away and it's sheer noise. Is there an art in striking the right dynamic balance between danceable passages and moments that are intended to blow people's minds?

Live you can get away with that more, but DJing I do want to fuck people's heads up. Even if you just drop the BPM down for half an hour and play some noise and acid, it's a different, interesting dynamic. People might not be able to dance for a little bit or they might not fully get it, but it holds their attention. You're getting in their heads and they appreciate that. There are some great DJs who do it brilliantly, but generally I'm fucking bored of hearing techno DJs play techno for four hours.

Do you enjoy the provocative nature of it?

Oh, definitely. I like testing people and seeing what I can get away with. I don't want to sound like a knobhead, but I really don't give a fuck what anybody thinks. Maybe I will do in five years when the bookings dry up [laughing] but, on the other hand, I don't really care. I want to be true to myself and I want to enjoy it. I am not going to stand there playing music I don't like. It wouldn't be the worst thing if this all ended one day. I've had a good innings.

That's a rare attitude these days, isn't it?

I know. A lot of people see making music as the money, the cash. There are people who used to make great music and now they've gone a different way, maybe protecting their pension, but I couldn't do that. How do you convince yourself that it's good? I know you're surrounded by people telling you you're fucking brilliant and blah blah. But are you? Are you really happy with yourself?

Have you suffered extreme reactions? Have you cleared dance floors? Has anyone tried to punch you in the DJ booth?

[laughing] No one's punched me, yet. I'm waiting for that. I don't think I've cleared any dance floors. There might have been one in Paris a few months back—I started with a full-on noise thing, shouting over the top on a CB radio—but they came back three or four songs in. Some nights, I'm surprised: the DJ before me will be playing 125 BPM techno, building the crowd up, and I go on and play this weird shit, but people always stay and they do get into it. I never change my set either. I'd never think, "That didn't go off, I'll start with some more beaty stuff." I stick to what I want to do.

You and your wife, Hayley Kerridge-Walker, started the Contort parties because, as you saw it, Berlin lacked forums for leftfield music. How do you regard Berlin at the moment?

I think it's similar. There are some good nights doing stuff. But there is an abundance of tech house, house, straight techno. I don't think it's just a Berlin problem, it's the same in a lot of places. There's no movement. Generally, it seems that people are happy to not cause a fuss and just accept what is presented to them online, by DJs, on the radio. I think people need to wake up. I don't think people think enough. They're lost in their iPhones and this digital world and they're not really taking note of what's going on around them.

Samuel Kerridge

Contort is usually free entry and the guest artists (eg. Regis, Christian Vogel) are invited to play anything they like, unpaid, so it's always an unknown quantity. How many people are you getting down?

The first party was about 20 people! But now—I'm not going to say it's a movement—people like it, it's something special, and they're proud of having been to every party. We get around 450 people on a Sunday daytime. Sometimes it'll be outright noise for an hour and people are stood there with their hands over their ears, but it varies. We'll have a noise act followed by an ambient project, then the next guy might do a full-on techno set. That's what I enjoy: listening to all this different stuff. I like club nights where there's a variant of different music, not just techno for 48 hours.

Playing devil's advocate, that's a lot of people to gather to listen to such extreme music.

Totally. But I want to see a Berlin where every fucking party is like that. That's my utopia.