Randall McNeil came out of East London at exactly the right moment: acid house was blowing the doors off, warehouses were filling up and pirate radio was carrying the new sound through whole estates. After hearing acid house at Notting Hill Carnival he started buying records and learning to mix, but even early on the obsession was not just getting from one tune to the next. It was about finding that point where two records locked together and the room suddenly heard something neither record could do on its own.

By 1989 he was playing on Centreforce. A famous early breakthrough came when a no-show at Living Dream in Leyton left him with an extended set in front of a huge crowd. Randall later called that night his “signing-on date” as a DJ people actively wanted to hear. Rather than simply surviving the opportunity, he established the calm, controlled style that would define him: deep knowledge, immaculate timing and a willingness to take combinations somewhere other DJs would not risk.

Underneath the legend was a deceptively simple discipline. Randall described the craft as counting bars, matching them perfectly and finding the drop. The magic came from judgement: knowing which two records belonged together, how long to let them breathe and the exact second to make the room realise it had been taken somewhere else.

As hardcore accelerated, his name became central to Orange at the Rocket and especially AWOL at the Paradise Club. AWOL became one of jungle’s defining rooms, and Randall was one of the selectors who gave the music its sense of movement. His mixing was technically exact but never sterile; he could roll records for long stretches, suddenly switch direction, or line up two drops so that the crowd heard a third thing created in real time.

Randall was part of the machinery that kept the scene moving too. In 1991 he helped establish De Underground in Forest Gate with Cool Hand Flex, Mike De Underground and Uncle 22. Anyone who came through that culture knows a shop like that was never just somewhere to buy vinyl. Producers brought tunes in, DJs heard dubplates, people swapped information and whole weekends got shaped across the counter. When De Underground closed, Randall and Cool Hand Flex carried that spirit forward through Mac II Recordings.

His own production catalogue was smaller than his DJ reputation, but it contains important markers. His collaboration with a young Andy C on Sound Control for RAM Records captured one of jungle’s great intergenerational links. Andy C would later describe Randall as a mentor and emphasise that Randall’s genius lay not simply in transitions but in creating memorable moments between records.

Through the mid-1990s and beyond, Randall stayed right there: AWOL, Metalheadz, Desire, One Nation, Innovation and all over the international circuit. The impressive bit is that he never turned into a museum piece from jungle’s golden years. As drum & bass split into more and more camps, Randall could move through the whole history of the music and still sound current. He was never protecting an era. He was selecting records.

Loads of DJs learned the mechanics from Randall — the long blends, the switches, the double drops — but the bit nobody could simply copy was the judgement. A trick means nothing if the room does not feel it. Randall knew when to let a tune breathe, when to hold back and when two drops together would make a dance erupt. That instinct is why other DJs studied him instead of just admiring him.

Randall died on 31 July 2024 at the age of 54. The response from the scene was immediate and unusually personal. DJs who had spent decades beside him still described themselves as students. That tells you more than any ranking ever could.

That is why Randall sits right at the heart of this Hall. He represented one of rave’s purest crafts: know your records, know your room and know the exact second one sound should become another. Plenty of people can mix. Randall made the mix itself the thing people remembered.