I met Felix Dickinson in Bristol on a grey February afternoon. He greeted me at Temple Meads train station and suggested we go to his favourite brunch spot, which I agreed to, secretly annoyed at myself for having already eaten. When we arrived, I sat in the car while Dickinson fumbled for change at a parking meter. He was short a pound, which I didn't have, so he tried to download an app advertised on the machine that lets you pay on your phone. That failed too, so we got back in the car and headed for his house. Then, about five minutes into the journey, he realised we were in dire need of petrol. We found a petrol station but there was a moment when it looked like the car might give up. "That would've made for a good intro to the piece," he joked.
Dickinson is 44 and has been a stalwart of the UK dance scene since the early '90s, but 2015 was his most successful year to date. According to RA's event listings, he played more shows last year than in 2013 and 2014 combined. He played fabric in London, DC-10 in Ibiza, The Warehouse Project in Manchester and Barcelona's Sónar festival, all for the first time. He's a DJ enjoying a golden moment.
During this period Dickinson didn't have a home. In September 2014 he'd decided to move from London, where he'd lived for 15 years, to Bristol. His reasons for the switch were fairly typical—he'd recently married and wanted a bigger house, and neither he nor Dan Tyler and Conrad McDonnell, AKA Idjut Boys, were in town enough to justify paying the high rent on their shared studio. Rather than take on DJ gigs or production work that he wasn't into, Dickinson opted to sell up and head west.