Roger Sanchez @ Ruby Skye

Roger Sanchez made DJing a career after years of never imagining it could be more than a hobby. Though he'd run a booming club night, made mix tapes that sold like hot potatoes and made his mark as a breakdancer in his Queens neighbourhood (leading to dance-on cameo roles in Eighties movies Breakdance and Krush Groove), he never considered making a living out of music. Instead he embarked on architecture degree in Manhattan, which he only abandoned after his father sat him down and told him music might be a better bet. The time wasn't wasted, though: When I approach tracks, he says, I always try to work on a foundation of the drums. The skeleton frames, the beams, are the beats and baseline and you build the music on top. I force myself to deconstruct the way I work. I look at every song as a problem that I have to solve.

I grew up listening to salsa, disco, hip hop; people would cut up blues records, rock records, he says by way of explaining his current range of musical interests. Anything back then was a party record. Somehow, Sanchez has also found time to learn four languages - English, Spanish, some French, some Italian I wanna learn Japanese next. (His interest in Japan extends to a gourmet's knowledge of sushi, almost two decades? worth of training in Shotokan Karate and a connoisseur's eye for the sci-fi worlds of the country's manga-style anime movies the perfect visual accompaniment to his future funk soundscapes.)

In case you've been staying indoors for the past decade or so, you'll know that opting to go pro as a DJ proved a wise choice. As one of the planet's foremost house DJs, Roger Sanchez has the art of making people feel right down to an exact science. (He's been practising since the age of 13, when he was first asked to man the decks at a friend's party.) He's taken his distinctively soulful, experimental sets around the world, from low-key residencies in his native New York to the wide open spaces of Ibiza or London's Fabric. He's brought the skills of his hip-hop to house music DJing (the third turntable and masterly scratching techniques being among the most famous) and now adds his own variety of interior decoration to the job, too: I burn incense, I light candles, I try to make the booth a little temple, a bit more of a home.