There's a moment in every Andy C set where his body language changes. It usually happens within ten or 20 minutes of him starting, and it's hard to miss. A man of medium height who always begins sets with his head down and his cap pulled low, he suddenly seems as tall as Tonn Piper, his six-foot-plus MC, and twice as lively. Clarke remains that way for the rest of his set.

This contrast is amplified by his famously fastidious intros. Clarke is consistently three turntables deep and pulls off at least one double, often triple, drop—usually comprising an unreleased dub and at least one scene-defining classic. These mixes are executed with such control you can see his hands tremor with tension as he counts the eighths and sixteenths. It's a tradition he's continued since the days his label, RAM Records, had a residency at the legendary London club The End.

While the intensity and attention to detail never subsides from his intro, it's clear that Clarke's nerves do. He gradually looks up more and more to check he has the crowd on-side. And whether that crowd is the 400-capacity dance floor he commanded for 13 weeks at his XOYO residency last year, or 20,000 fans at drum & bass festivals such as Let It Roll, once he thinks people are locked in he settles into the groove. He bounces with the same moves he's had since he first got bitten by the mixing bug at the age of 14.

Almost 30 years later, Clarke still seems to get the same thrill from DJing that he did in his early sets at London's famous Telepathy raves. He debunks the cliché of the moody elder statesman and remains hyper-enthused by the music, by his job and by the raw art of mixing, which he still practices during his off-time for upwards of 20 hours a week.

Take us back to your first setup.

Citronic belt drives. I seem to recall the pitch was rotary. They were very wild beasts to tame. You had to be so delicate and mother them. And the mixer wasn't even a DJ mixer. It was a live six- or eight-channel mixer with no crossfader. Each turntable had two channels, one panned hard left, one panned hard right. So when you're bringing a tune in you'd be bringing two channels in. I don't think I bothered with EQ in those days!

Wasn't one of your first records you practiced with Madonna?

It was "Vogue" with "Wicked" by Shut Up & Dance under their Rum & Black alias. A strange combination, but those were the two records I spent hours and hours and hours learning to mix with. The mission was all-encompassing. When I got in from school, when I got up in the morning. Every single minute until I worked out what I had to do and felt that first instance where the tunes went together. Or at least a semblance of being together. And once I had that, I sought a few more tunes.

You just had two records?

I had one or two others. Stone Roses' "Fools Gold." A bunch of other things but none of them were even in the same solar system. So I got on my bike after school and camped out in Boogie Times, Romford. They got sick of me. I'd ask for every record I'd heard on pirate radio that I wanted. I couldn't buy loads of them because I only had my pocket money.

I'm assuming lists were involved.

Oh yes. I'd have lists and try and decipher what the tunes were called from what the MC or DJ was saying. This was the start of really getting into the music and knowing the tunes. I had quite a collection going and I'd detail them all in my school exercise book—what records I've got, what other kinds of records in that category, what sounds good together. I'd have these lists while I was daydreaming at school. I found them the other day in the loft. I found the exercise book with the first-ever RAM logo and the profit and loss account for RAM 001. It was a science book.

Weren't you pursuing sports before DJing?

I wish. I was going to try and get a job in a printers. But, to be honest, the minute I had decks I knew I was going to pursue nothing but being a DJ. I know that sounds pretty random, or even cheesy, but that was really it. And when I left school, at 16, there was nothing else I'd rather do. I was handing out flyers, doing the label, trying to make records, practicing relentlessly.

Still on belt drives?

No, I got Technics on one of my very last days of school. I'd saved up some money and my parents helped out. I came home and I could smell Technics when I opened the front door. They were in my bedroom. I was so excited. The smell really stayed with me. That thick rubber platter especially. The house smelt of Technics for weeks for me. I was in heaven. I felt I could really start to learn to DJ then. These are what the real DJs use in the clubs. Now I can really go for it. I started doing tapes and Scott [Bourne, Clarke's manager] hooked me up with the Cyndicut FM pirate station. I'd go down to wherever it was broadcasting at the time, and that was a massive learning curve.

By then your collection must have been shaping up?

Massively. One of the lists I've found has got one of my first releases, as Desired State, among all these classic hardcore records and Formation Records releases. Then LTJ Bukem's "Demon's Theme" is listed alongside Andy C's "Sour Mash." Bizarre.

So these lists went on for some time into your career.

Yeah around 1993, '94. That was when I decided, OK I know I have a substantial amount of records now. And I also started getting promos. But even when "Valley Of The Shadows" came out I wasn't on any DJ lists. I was buying records, quite rightly, as a young collector. Not even just to play out, but as a fan who loved the music.

So while you were making scene-defining records with Origin Unknown you were still on the dance floor side of the booth soaking it all up?

Absolutely. I was out as a raver with Rob Playford from Moving Shadow and Danny Donnelly [Boogie Times / Suburban Base founder], who I got to know working at Boogie Times. That was a dream job. I'd be mixing in the record shop, trying to get people to buy records. Trying to pull off mixes in a record shop on a Saturday afternoon with all the local heads in attendance was a good schooling. I'd be there for hours on a Friday night practicing these mixes to show off. Anyway, yes we were very much ravers at that stage. Telepathy at Wax Club, Roller Express, then AWOL at Paradise Club. That was the game-changer.

Let's go back to AWOL for a second.

It was church. I can't put it any simpler. It's where you heard the records, where you learnt about the records and, more importantly, learnt about the mixes. For me the mixes are the standout memory. Before then you had big tunes. I'd go out and hear these big tunes and I'd want to know them and collect them. AWOL was about brand new tunes you'd never heard before and big, really creative and head-spinning mixes.

You'd go home remembering them. I even remember GQ flowing this rhyme over a Gachet mix and his rhyme got called for a rewind. This was a new level of appreciation from the crowd. Everyone in the building slapping the walls and someone went up and rewound the tune for him to do that lyric again. That was special. If I analyse things, that was the moment when I learnt it's much more than just DJing. Coming away from nights with memories like this sit with you for life. I remember Randall rolling out mixes for a minute and a half and you'd get that moment where the tunes would sing in unison and it would be magic. The whole place would explode.

You don't get that at every night.

You don't. And that was exactly why I did the XOYO residency. Rediscovering that intimacy and that vibe where every single person in that room knows exactly what's going on. That's what I wanted to capture, and I think we did.

One particular memory I have from XOYO was you playing a Calibre track and letting it roll out for its entirety while you blended five or six different tunes in and out of the mix. I could see you bouncing higher and higher like you were discovering the mixes.

I remember that! That's literally what I was doing. I was enjoying the tune so much and trying out little teases. I thought, "Sod it, I'm going to let this play and bring another tune in and another and another." That's what I do when I'm mixing at home. Just buzzing, trying things out. You can't do that at every gig. That's special.

Was that another reason for doing the residency? You now play very big shows and maybe you lose that flexibility to go off-piste?

No, the real draw for me was the same venue, two-hour sets, every week. I do get to have those moments at larger shows like the All Night ones because I'm playing for over six hours and I can go deep and play everything. Festival sets are a different proposition, of course, you only have an hour and you have to pull out bigger tunes. But the All Night ones were my outlet for being able to draw deeper and more experimentally and play what I want to play. For XOYO it was more about community. People knowing what I'm doing and appreciating the mix and the set structure.

So the All Night sets were your way of combating the challenges you face when you're playing to big crowds?

Yeah. It was also a response to the fact that DJ sets were getting shorter and shorter. I know this might sound ungrateful because some venues are serious clubs and you're lucky to play there at all, let alone 45 minutes. You should appreciate it. But the constant feeling of not being able to play all the tunes I wanted to was very frustrating. It affects the set. You don't think about the peaks or troughs, you don't let it flow naturally.

You feel you have to go in hard?

You do have to go in hard. And that's a shame because it's so nice to go off on tangents and take people to places they don't know about. They might not be going crazy for a while but they know if they stick with me we'll go even crazier later on. That makes for a much more enjoyable set, and shorter times did stop that for a while. We were always anti-short set times, even during our days at The End. I did two-hour sets, which felt like a proper marathon, and I would practice for hours with the new dubs I'd cut that day, right up until I'd have to leave to get to the club.

Yes, about dubplates. Can you remember your first trip to Music House?

Well, the first place I cut dubs was Porky's Prime Cuts in Soho. I remember I had "Valley Of The Shadows" VIP. I went into Blackmarket and told them I had a remix and Nicky [Blackmarket] said, "Here's £50, run over to Porky's and cut me a dub." That was my first experience doing it. I was like, OK I need to be doing this. Then Music House became the centre of everything. That was where everyone would go. Me, Hype and Brockie would meet up every Thursday afternoon and go round all the record stores. At that point stores would have promo slots for certain DJs. So I'd have promos to pick up in Blackmarket, Lucky Spin, Unity. I'd get the promos then pick up some DATs from people's houses with my mini DAT recorder. Then we'd end up at Music House.

Who were your most frequent house calls to?

I'd pop in and see Dillinja quite a lot. I'd go to Peshay's house and his mum would answer the door and make us a cuppa. I'd go and see Bryan Gee and he'd have all the Bristol stuff. It was a crazy time.

Drum & bass was still a niche at the time, with a small amount of DJs and tunes being made. You needed dubs to make sure everyone wasn't playing the same tunes. Like a trickle-down effect.

That's exactly what they were about. It was a very small scene and these things would set you apart. Having those special tunes was the ultimate. I remember hearing Micky Finn dropping Deep Blue's "Helicopter Tune" for the first time. Imagine being the first person to have that on dub?

That type of hierarchy and exclusivity must have put noses out of joint from time to time, though?

That was dubplate culture. That's the vibe. You'd be hearing all these tunes being cut in the cutting house. So you would know who's got what. And yeah there were times when I'd ask someone for something and they'd say, "You know what mate? Give it a week and yes, but I got to make sure this other guy has it for a week." And you'd be like, "Erm… OK cool, thanks mate." And yeah, you'd be a bit humble about it. But then you get moments when you're the first person to have Leviticus' "Burial" on dub. It was swings and roundabouts, and it made all of our sets unique… Then came the trick of making sure you were mixing them differently to everyone else.

Let's talk about double drops. Can you remember your first-ever double drop?

That would have been at home practicing. I can't remember the very first one, but I remember that cueing up anywhere besides the first kick was alien to me. I'd have to work out mathematically where to start the records. That came from making records in eight- or sixteen-bar segments and realising I could play a record from certain points. But you'd get moments practicing and think, "Whoa what was that? They kicked in at the same time!" It would happen by accident and then you'd reverse engineer that accident and work out where to drop them.

But when that penny dropped it became the holy grail, and every tune had to drop together. It made things even more fun. The concept of DJing for me is to be excited. So mixing was great. Rolling out was amazing, but getting two tunes to drop together at the same time and smash in together to create a whole other level was just the one. I became obsessed with it, doing it with every record I own. I would stand there for hours trying to work the mix out. Obviously the more you'd mix, the more you'd know the tunes and when to drop things instinctively. But a lot of early records made it harder because they had off-key intros or weird arrangements because the tunes weren't being made for DJing.

You'd get records with one extra bar or even one extra beat and you'd have to bring things in at a really weird time for them to come together, right?

Exactly. And that made it even more fun. Pulling off mixes with tunes that you know a lot of people in the dance and a lot of your peers around you know are hard to mix, that was such a thrill. Crossing my fingers that things would come in at the right time. Sometimes it goes against all your DJ muscle memory to drop it because you're dropping it on the third beat or something mad like that. But it would add an extra dimension to pull of those mixes. It becomes a challenge. That's why I still use turntables. I love the art of DJing and everything that goes with it. That was a geeky thing for me during the week to work out those mixes.

Practicing at home is one thing. But in a place like The End where those decks shook, sweat was coming off the ceiling and everyone is expecting something special because that's the standard you've set—these are high-stress situations.

The most high-stress situations I've ever had as a DJ were doing those intros at The End. I would be shaking and sweating myself. But again that was the thrill, and the adrenaline was something else. But then at XOYO I approached it differently because I found thinking too much about the intro means you're not thinking about doing a good set. So some nights I'd set up the intro pretty much on the night when I arrived.

So that XOYO finale intro mix of Original Sin's "Therapy," Dillinja's remix of Bad Company's "Nitrous" and Sub Focus's "Stomp" just came in the moment?

That mix was thought up on the night. I'm not lying. "Therapy" was a tune I kept forgetting to play each week, so I had to play it. Obviously I thought about the mix before I got there, I didn't pull them out randomly and go, "What shall I play?" But I knew on the way down there I had to play it and I knew the intro had to be special. When I watched the video back the next day I surprised myself. I'd never done that mix before. The "Nitrous" remix has a really fast stabby bassline that suits the manic nature of "Therapy."

Who was your contemporary in double dropping? Mampi Swift?

Swift all day long. He was, and still is, the man. I've watched him pull off outrageous double drops. Just bang—have some of that. We're the same age and came through at a similar time, cut dubs together and we'd buzz over certain mixes. We'd eulogise about Randall mixes we'd heard and ideas we'd had for mixes. There were many times when we'd be at the same rave and I'd see him pull something off and think, "Fair play mate, you've smashed that out of the park." But that's what it's all about. That's inspiration to find the next sick mix. There's a lot of great DJs out there and everybody double drops. That's the nature of things.

Some DJs lament the loss of the subtle art. It's easier to double drop now with cue points and sync, and some DJs such as Marky have remarked on how the musicality is being missed. Is the double drop being abused?

It can be. But the crowd decide that don't they? They vote with their feet, so if they're enjoying those DJs who constantly double drop things then they've made that decision. It's something DJs learn over the years: when to let things roll out and when to smash things up a bit. Double dropping, as you say, is a whole load easier now, so I understand why DJs go nuts and drop everything at the same time. I like doing that from time to time, you get on a right vibe and just want to play everything all at the same time. But then other times you want to vibe out. But yeah, that's what being a DJ is about. Understanding when to do it or when the crowd need a breather.

When did three or four decks come into play for you?

The fourth deck didn't. But the third deck is second nature to me now. It actually came about through a gig for One Nation at Brixton Academy years ago. They said, "We want you to do a three-deck set." I was unsure, but one day a turntable arrived to the office with a note saying, "Sending you this in case you want to reconsider the three-deck set."

I set it up and for the first night I failed miserably. I was trying to rush, I didn't get the flow right. You have to entrust in the turntables. You have to leave the tunes in the mix and trust they're right and leave them. You have to concentrate on the third tune while the others are in the mix and learn that even if it starts going out it will take a while to go out fully. You don't need to panic. Sometimes you can try and fix a mix too soon. It basically becomes a workflow. Getting the mix, trusting the mix, cue up the new tune, check the mix, check that one, bring it up and then the EQ covers a multitude of sins.

A little like a pilot checking their instruments before take-off.

Yeah, you do have this check list of things you need to do. But that first three-deck set? I was so nervous. It was insane. They hyped it up and I thought people were all thinking, "What's he up to, then?" Then Skibadee was MCing, DJ Fresh and Adam F were there behind me, and I knew I had to pull it off. It was sink or swim. I think it was a bit messy, it must have been, but I got to the end and thought it was fun and did a few more. It took a few more one-off shows but then I got really into it and now it's hard to mix with two. It doesn't feel natural. But that first show I was sweating buckets and was so nervous.

When did you finally give up the dubs? And didn't you get thrown in at the deep-end with digital?

Oh god yeah. It was 2011. I'd been setting up my Alive concept show and I was already practicing with Traktor so I had it on my computer. I got to a gig in Denmark and my records didn't arrive. I remember sitting in the airport thinking, "What am I going to do? I can't play!" I thought about Traktor and told the promoter I might be able to do it if he had a Traktor box. He sourced one and I quickly picked 40 tunes from iTunes. I didn't know what to do, I'd never done it live.

The guy turns up, I plug it in and it wouldn't work. Turns out I didn't have the drivers, so I tethered my iPhone and downloaded the drivers. This was on stage in front of thousands of people! But it worked and it was a game changer. It was a wicked open-air festival and such a big crowd, and the vibe was the one. That was the catalyst. It would have happened eventually but I had to be thrown in at the deep end. Then I got to a show in Portugal the next day, my records turned up and the set was a nightmare. The needles jumped, the sound wasn't set up for dubs, it was horrible. That was pretty much the end of dubs for me, and it really opened my eyes to what was possible with new DJ technology.

How do you see DJ technology developing?

I'm not sure I can say because I haven't researched it since my Alive concept. I just use Traktor and I'm really happy with my setup. But if I did another show like that then I'm sure there's a lot of new technology I could incorporate. The Alive show was pretty complex, with every function MIDI-mapped to functions on the mixer, then feeding back and triggering visuals through Ableton. It was mad in-depth stuff and was my pinnacle of being geeky as a DJ. I was mixing using turntables, so analogue, but fully integrated with MIDI and incredibly in-depth digital mapping.

Would you go to that level of detail again?

Yeah I'd definitely consider it. It started off thinking of the concept of it being a DJ-based live show. So it's always unique but also a performance and production. So I spent nights watching tutorials and videos and reading and learning what equipment was out there to facilitate it. The technology helped us shape the show. It was a really intense and interesting time.

Then the next concept was to totally strip things back?

That's right. The All Night shows stripped it back to just DJing. I was fully Traktored by then so I had the ability to do long sets. To go to The End and just play two hours you'd take four bags of dubs. The way I mix I couldn't do All Night sets with dubs.

And you probably have a new concept being plotted behind the scenes...

There probably might be! That has always been the way. Whether it's three decks back in the day or even double drops or concepts. You can't tread water, you can't rest on your laurels, you have to try new things.

Is that why you've won so many best DJ awards? That continuation and development?

Maybe. I'm honoured and humbled every time I win, and I never expect to win, but the challenges I set myself aren't to win anything, it's the personal fulfilment. I set a challenge and when it comes off it's fantastic. It's nerve-wracking. The first double drop, the first three-deck set, the first Alive show, the first two-hour set, the first All Night. It's very intense, but when you pull it off it's like, "Jeeeez!" And that drives me. I'm sure it drives a lot of people. Everyone likes to do new stuff, right? You can't do the same thing every time, again and again.

You mentioned nerves a few times. Do you get nervous?

I get excited. I get a lot of adrenaline and a lot of nervous energy. I don't like turning up too long before the set because I get so focused on the set I get distracted and very anxious. It sounds weird but I like to sit and chill in the car. Like Rampage earlier this year. It's 15,000 people, I've got an hour and it's being broadcast live. I can't mess this up. I have to be completely focussed and not mess anything up at all. You get in that zone and when it pulls off there's such a release of energy. It's insane.

You can see you get into that mindset. You become a lot more animated.

Yeah that's the moment I'm settled into it. You get the lay of the land, you connect with the crowd, you can see what's working and you have a party. That's what it's all about at the end of the day.

To a certain degree you've never stopped being a raver. You seem to still remember what it's like to be on the dance floor.

Definitely. And when I get into that zone and it's all connecting it's still like the early days. Surely it is for everyone who loves music? That special feeling when the mixes are popping and everyone is really into it and so excited. I'll never forget that from the dance floor at AWOL, and I still get it now as DJ. I'm addicted to it. I went on holiday for a few weeks earlier this year and had withdrawal symptoms. I need that fix as much as the music fans on the dance floor do.