Bristol

“The tent was rammed halfway through my set - they wouldn’t let anybody in, so I must have done something right,” beams funk aficionado Boca 45, a few days after his set at Glastonbury. It’s unsurprising that he had such a full crowd: mixing across genre boundaries, his set was a hardcore cross-section of funk, soul, and hip-hop breaks; beats that are the foundation for so many dance music genres, as well as being essential sounds in their own right.

As such, you can expect to hear anything from ’60s psych to Latin, dub to ska, rock to pop, as well as funk and soul sounds in his energetic mixes. “I’m always listening to the beat,” he says.

“I’m certainly not trying to tick a box in terms of trying to be too careful [about] how I sound,” Hendy says. “I just want to be as honest as possible on all fronts - to present what I hear in my head, and use pretty much the same process that I always have.” Relying heavily on samplers, drum machines, and synths, while adding live instrumentation to the pot, collaboration has always been key to Hendy’s work. Each time he works with another artist, he approaches it differently. Sometimes he knows what horn riff or vocal idea he’s looking for.

Hendy is mindful of the fact that a good sense of humour is always “best to have.” That certainly plays out on the album. On one track, Serge performs the ‘Toilet Duck’ rap, and there‘s another track that shouts out West Country scarecrow hero, Worzel Gummidge. After a brief mention of the “politically appalling” state of the world right now, referencing Trump and Brexit, Hendy admits that politics are always on his mind, but he prefers not to be too preachy in the music he makes.