Riz Ahmed

I grew up in Wembley.

Wembley is both the site of England's greatest triumph in the 1966 World Cup and also...

You know, in the shadow of that stadium, I'd go every Sunday to Wembley Market, which is where you'd buy the Chinese spring roll and the immigrant kind of food stalls and the fake designer clothes that we'd buy and sell over there.

You know, amongst that kind of working class and immigrant community.

And pirate radio station culture was just...

That was just everywhere, you know.

Yes, you'd have, you know, the BBC radio stations and the other London stations, but in between all those airwaves, all the FM frequencies that were not spoken for, you'd hear a faint crackle and then the voice of MCs on microphones that were broadcasting from the roofs of housing projects locally.

And that's pirate radio culture.

So it was there that I was kind of exposed more and more to drum and bass and garage, particularly when I was too young to actually go to the raves themselves.

As soon as I was old enough to kind of...

try and hack off whatever faint facial hair I had and try and, like, grow it back thicker.

You know, I was at the raves themselves.

And, you know, I just love the music.

I love the specificity of London's musical subculture.

And the UK, I think, does that so well, you know, because of the clash and the mix of different cultures and different sounds and influences.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I was exposed to it and then I started doing it myself, both at raves and on pirate radio.

And I remember when I went to Oxford and I got in there, I felt like I'd lost something.

I'd lost this thing that I loved.

And so I was eager to kind of keep it going.