From John Digweed and 10 hours sets to Heinz Toast Toppers; we speak to Danny Howells about his fabulous new album Choice.

Your latest album Choice is a nostalgic look back at the track's that have done it for you over the years. Did it take long to pick the tracks?

"I think out of all the albums I've done, this one came together easier than any of the others. It's one of those jobs, I say job but it's not a job - it's a labour of love, but it's one of those things that is every DJs dream in a way. It's your fantasy mix, it's always something you want to do when you get a bit of spare time to give to your friends, so you are always mentally prepared for it."

"When the record company Azuli asked me about it, I was actually away on a six week tour in Asia and Australia, and because I always spend my spare time burning all my classics to CD anyway so I've got them to hand, I gave them a list of 100 tracks right away, so the hardest thing was to whittle it down to forty. We had to spend an afternoon in London going through the entire list and rating each track I'd given them out of ten."

What's been the highlight for you over the last year club-wise?

"This year has been insane, but the real stand out in the UK has been The End in London. I've really enjoyed that this year and I'm going to do it more regularly next year. For me, the standout gig was in Tokyo at Womb which was just mind-blowing, it left me absolutely speechless. Normally I have a lot to say, but this particular time, I just couldn't say anything."

"The second place was on the recent tour of South America, in particular Buenos Aires. I'm normally a fan of smaller events, the more intimate venues with anything from 200 to 1000 people, but this was a Creamfields party, and there must have been between 7000-9000 near the stage, 50,000 at the whole event, but it was like playing in the back room of the club because the vibe was just mind-blowing. It was actually a bit intimidating for me personally, but it was incredible."

Did you always want to be a DJ?

"Yes I did, but I didn't think it would be possible. When I was a kid I was always fascinated by mobile DJs. When we had a family function or a marriage or something I was always sucking up to the DJ and asking him to play ABBA or David Bowie. A lot of my old singles, my old 7 inches have Daniel written on them, because I would always take along a bunch of my own records and ask the DJ to play them, so I've always been fascinated by playing music to a crowd of people."

When did things really start to happen for you, DJing wise?

"At the Crypt in Hastings, but I was lucky, things fell together really quickly for me in 1991 / 1992. The first time I played on decks was when my friend Andy and I did a party in a little room above a pub to celebrate Prince's birthday because we were both big Prince fans. So we hired decks, a strobe light and a smoke machine, then after that I thought I've got to get decks. So I started saving up, then within a few months of buying them, I landed a residency at the Crypt in Hastings doing every Friday night from open till close which was from 10pm to 2am and a great education for me. After that one of my friends gave one of my mix tapes to John Digweed so literally within months of buying my decks I was resident at Bedrock, so it was all a bit of a whirlwind. It was definitely an intense year - I had just started my day job working in a psychiatric hospital, and had moved out of home and got my own place, so it all happened really quickly."

Do you still keep in touch with John Digweed?

"We talk on the phone and still play together sometimes. Last year we did four gigs together, so we are still really good friends and I still see him a fair bit. He lives quite near by and his mum lives down the road from me, so he pops in when he's on his way back from seeing his mum."

Your ten hour sets in New York are legendry. What's the secret to a ten hour set?

"To me personally it's enjoying a range of music. If I'm out, it bores me if I'm hearing the same kind of music for too long, so it's having enough different styles of music so you can take the set in different directions the entire night. So making sure I've plenty of really nice opening records like ambient, down tempo tunes and then onto deep house, tech house, tribal and techno, so I've got a nice balanced bag of music that will enable me to keep it shifting slightly the entire night."

"On a physical level, I think trying to stay sober for the first part of the night is very important. When you get to the end you can start letting rip with the old tequila and stuff, but for the first six or seven hours you need to be really be focused on what you are doing. Otherwise you get drunk and start playing all your big bombs in the first half of the night and then the second half you are scrambling trying to work out what to do. You've got to keep quite focused so you can structure it, so the whole night is interesting and people want to stay there until the end."

"When I do Montreal, it can be anything up to 14 hours, but the great thing about it is that normal sets are around 3 hours so you find you are usually only playing the really big stuff. You've got a DJ before you banging it out, a DJ coming on after you, so you end up generally playing a very small fraction of the music you have. When you do a long set it's something you can really get your teeth stuck into and you find yourself in a situation where you can actually play experimental stuff so it actually goes a lot quicker because you just get so lost in it, and you can take a lot of twists and turns that you couldn't in a standard 3 hour set."

"In the right place I prefer them. In some clubs it wouldn't work but in certain clubs where you know its going to work and nice understanding crowd who want to stick to you for the whole journey. Generally most the time you are setting the mood for the whole night. You are warming up for yourself, creating your own vibe in the room and you are getting a rapport with the crowd early on, and I do think you play better as well."

Who was the first DJ to really inspired you?

"The first DJ I was exposed to heavily was John Digweed actually. Even before the Bedrock parties he used to play all the local clubs. When I was at college we used to get down to The Farm, Luther Vandross and Happy Mondays and all sort of random music and John was playing a really wide range of music from house to top 40 because he was putting on rave nights but making money doing a Tuesday in a glitzy club, so he was a big influence from an early age."

"He also used to bring DJs to Hastings, so he'd bring Steve Proctor, Darren Emerson, Billy Nasty, Paul Daly form Leftfield, so a lot of the people he brought down became fairly influential as well. It was really lucky for me at that time because when I started playing, there were a few local DJs but not on the scale that there are now, so I was noticed pretty quickly but there were less DJs around. It wasn't quite the same then, but that said, from getting the decks to being able to leave my day job was about 9 years, so it took a while before I could actually give up nursing."

Do you miss nursing?

"Actually yes, a lot. I find with DJing that even though you are playing to crowds, most of the work is alone. At home you are preparing your record bag, going through records, travelling, and in hotel rooms your best friend is BBC World. When you are nursing, you are very much part of a team. There's always five of you working together and then you have the patients, so I miss the rewarding aspect of nursing. For me personally I do miss the fact you might spend 6 months working with a certain patient and see some improvement, but sometimes you can spend ages with a patient and they can go and kill themselves so it can be heart breaking as well.

Do you see yourself in music industry for the long haul?

"Yes I hope so. I think the only thing I could do after this is going back to my old job which I would do at the drop of a hat. Some of the greatest laughs I've ever had were in the hospital with the patients and I still see them around Hastings and we stop and have a chat. But hopefully I can sustain myself in music for the foreseeable future."

Tell us 3 things we don't know about Danny Howells.

"Oh what? Oh no! OK, my favourite food is Heinz Toast Toppers, I have a full size Sponge Bob Square Pants fancy dress costume and my favourite TV show of all time is Dallas."

Read more about Danny's latest album Choice, out February 2006.

By Rachael Hannan