it look like we weren't bright enough to do what we were doing and that it must have been some sort of accident. Some of the more middle class people around the band often mistook me for some kind of idiot savant despite comparatively few other people of any age or background being able to do what I had done to the most populous art form in the western world before I turned 18. I did not like that and I started to get more bugged by it as the years went by. Nascent class consciousness, you could call it. Live DI were just astonishing, entirely unique in their use of technology and more-importantly their attempt in music to reflect their consciousness with utter accuracy. A 93 gig at Sheffield Leadmill is possibly my favourite gig of that entire decade. Most British pop at the time used old techniques to make people feel secure and on steady ground. In contrast DI sounded like a simultaneous rollercoaster, flood and earthquake -- they were the sound of where your young head was at, a sound that refused to bow that head in deference to the past or any sense of cowed inferiority. DI didn't have influences. They had chaos. Ian C: I had a kind of pantheon of greats who were my touchstones: Joy Divison and New Order, Gang of Four, The Only Ones, Wire, REM, Public Enemy, My Bloody Valentine, the Young Gods, Velvet Underground, Talking Heads - so many, to