Randall McNeil came out of East London’s late-1980s underground as acid house, warehouse parties and pirate radio were changing the social map of the city. After hearing acid house at Notting Hill Carnival, he began buying records, learning to mix and chasing the kind of blends that could create an entirely new moment between two tunes.

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. Rather than simply surviving the opportunity, Randall 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.

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 also part of the infrastructure behind the music. In 1991 he helped establish De Underground in Forest Gate with Cool Hand Flex, Mike De Underground and Uncle 22. The shop and label were not merely retail: they were meeting places where producers, DJs, dubplates and ideas circulated. After De Underground closed, Randall and Cool Hand Flex continued that lineage 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 remained a reference point across AWOL, Metalheadz, Desire, One Nation, Innovation and countless international bookings. As drum & bass fractured into subgenres, he retained an ability to move through the full history of the music without sounding like a nostalgia DJ. New music remained part of his identity because selection, not era, was always the real point.

His influence travelled through technique. The double drop became a central part of later drum & bass performance, but with Randall the idea was never a trick for its own sake. The best combinations changed the emotional shape of the room. Younger DJs copied the mechanics; the harder thing to copy was his judgement.

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.

His memorial belongs at the centre of rave history because he represented one of its purest crafts: knowing the records, knowing the room and knowing the precise second when one sound should become another.