House music: it's more than just a feeling. For young turk Richard Dinsdale, it's a way of life. Although only a sprightly 24 years old, this new kid on the house block's been living, breathing and bleeding dance music for the best part of a decade. His mouth-watering mix of tech-tinged electro and bass-heavy house is a regular fixture at leading London nightspot The Cross, his solid, groove-led productions snapped up by UK labels Renaissance, Kinky Vinyl, Big Love and Toolroom. He also counts some of the scene's most successful movers'n'shakers - Erick Morillo, Mark Knight, Seamus Haji, Trophy Twins, Plump DJs - among his famous fans. So where did it all go right for Richard? Skip back to the late Nineties, when as a schoolboy he got his first introduction to club culture through his elder sibling. "He used to go out clubbing and have his mates come round the house" he recounts. "They would be on the decks and then when they'd go out, I'd stay up listening to radio and recording sets" He was hooked. Which, given his family's own love of music, is unsurprising. "Even when I was very young I remember my mum used to listen to old Motown records!" Disco's clearly in the Dinsdale blood. Bitten by the house bug, 13-year-old Richard got himself a pair of decks. "They were a pair of really dodgy belt drives! One broke, so I ended up hooking a tape player to the mixer, just so I could still practice on the other one" It was an unorthodox method, but while his school friends were busy on PlayStations and the like, Richard was busy honing his talents. So much so, in fact, that he was a winner of Muzik magazine's Bedroom Bedlam award a couple of years later. He eventually got enough money together to buy himself some infinitely more swish Technics, and, aged 17, bagged himself a gig at infamous south London rave den The Chunnel Club. "Around that time Pete Wardman from Trade had taken me under his wing" he says of his ear
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