Before my visit to Cork in March, I was interviewed by the regional newspaper. The interview is pretty accurate, although I am cited as a Drum n Bass DJ (!!).

Memoirs of an invisible man – Don O’Mahony chats to the illusive Drum n Bass DJ Hoonboy – Evening Echo, March 20th 2008

To say that Hoonboy leads a double life would be overstating the case somewhat. It’s not as if he’s a mild-mannered Dr Jekyll by day, transforming into a Mr Hyde figure of breakcore insanity by night but as someone who’s a full-time professional musician and producer of film and TV music the thrills of breakcore provide him with a much needed release.

Not that any of his clients are aware of his Hoonboy persona as he keps it separate. That said the notion that some of his clients would find his breakcore excursions a little hard to digest is no small source of satisfaction.

“I think that’s what I like about it”, he insists.

“For me it’s the complete antithesis to the work I do during the week. So whilst television adverts and corporate videos are very, very soul destroying the breakcore is my way of saying I don’t care about any of that because at the weekends I can do this and I know there are people that are going to appreciate what I do. Even if it’s not very many of them.”

Hoonboy started writing music in 1999. Back then he was cutting an unlikely figure as a hard-house DJ playing mid-sized clubs. His discovery of Aphex Twin and Squarepusher led him to create ambient music but everything changed for him two years ago when he started doing mash-ups and making breakcore. He was drawn to the music by “the idea that anything goes within the music and all these ideas that I wanted to express and couldn’t express before suddenly became acceptable.

“And because breakcore’s such a massive umbrella it’s almost a bit of a non-genre. Breakcore is a kind of everything-else box.”

An average Hoonboy track takes a cheesy classic such as Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean or Nena’s 99 Red Balloons as a starting point.

“I generally start with a tune that i’d like to destroy,” he admits as he puts it on the rack then he hangs, draws and quarters it. Is there an element of homage involved in this process I wonder.

“There is a homage,” he agrees, “because I pick tunes that I did admire but I don’t admire them enough to want to leave them alone. I’m doing homage in a way but at the same tim I’m sort of taking something which will be appreciated by a completely different social group and turning it completely on its head.”

It becomes apparent that the extent to which he finds breakcore, with its aural assault of chopped-up drumbeats, distorted bass lines and agonised samples, rewarding goes beyond the merely visceral.

“The thing is that breakcore is very political anyway, mostly focused on sort of anti-American sentiments,” he says mysteriously at one point.

I for one would not associate breakcore with having any politicised component whatsoever. It seems too chaotic and hedonistic for that but Hoonboy recognises that this element is greater than the sentiments expressed in a track like Gold Dust Ragga.

“It’s something I firmly believe in,” he maintains.

“I think breakcore particularly because of its extreme nature attracts extreme thoughts from people and sort of extremes in creativity. Now breakcore is a minority; it goes with all sorts of beliefs.

“People into breakcore are quite anti-establishment and anti-government to a certain extent, not necessarily in an anarchistic kind of way, but in a way that, you’ve had your chance. You got it wrong. And by turning things around you can see you can do better.”

Hoonboy plays An Cruiscin Lan on Saturday, March 22