Roni Size's music grew out of Bristol's sound-system culture. At home, reggae, hip-hop, soul, and funk came through his family; at local youth clubs, he and his friends learned to DJ and began finding ways to make their own records.
Equipment was a shared resource before it was a studio setup. He has recalled raising money at a youth club to buy a drum machine, then organising a sponsored walk for a sampler. Those early opportunities developed into the Basement Project, where he also became a youth worker and music teacher.
With the Bristol production collective around him, he helped establish Full Cycle Records. Reprazent took that work into a band setting, and their album New Forms won the Mercury Prize in 1997. The award belongs to that collective release, rather than to a Roni Size solo album.
His production has continued to connect sampling with live performance. Working with bassist Si John and drummer Clive Deamer, he recorded original parts, selected sections, and fed those sounds back into his tracks.
In a 2017 interview, he explained how limited sampling time had shaped his early decisions. The move to software opened up different possibilities, but recording musicians and working directly with sound remained part of his method.
