Caspar Pound arrived in British dance music remarkably young. Before Rising High, before The Hypnotist and before the label catalogue became its own world, he was part of A Homeboy, A Hippie & A Funki Dredd. Their Total Confusion crossed into the UK singles chart in October 1990, peaking at number 56. It catches Pound at an important point: already working in the fast-changing space between house, techno, hip-hop sampling and the harder British rave sound that was beginning to find its own identity.

John Peel was hearing that movement too. He played A Homeboy, A Hippie & A Funki Dredd in 1990 and invited the group to record a BBC session. Recorded on 13 January 1991 and first broadcast on 3 February, it put Pound’s work inside the national-radio story just before Rising High opened its doors.

In February 1991 Pound founded Rising High Records in London. The label grew out of his work around F2 Studios and his collaboration with studio producer Pete Smith. Together they became The Hypnotist, and the first Rising High release — Rainbows in the Sky / Death by Dub, RSN1 — set the tone immediately: high-energy, psychedelic rave techno that could sit between house, techno and the rapidly hardening UK underground.

The Hypnotist quickly became Pound’s defining artist identity. Rainbows in the Sky, The House Is Mine, Hardcore You Know The Score and the surrounding catalogue carried machine pressure, theatrical samples and the intensity of the early-90s rave floor. The records worked in Britain, but their harder European feel also travelled strongly into Germany.

What makes Pound more than a producer with a run of old-skool records is what happened next. He did not turn Rising High into a factory for copies of its first hits. The catalogue widened. Hardcore techno could sit beside ambient music, abstract electronics and deeper listening records. Mixmaster Morris, Pete Namlook, Bedouin Ascent, Earth Leakage Trip and other artists made the label feel more like a map of electronic possibilities than a single genre.

That open outlook became infrastructure. Harthouse’s own history confirms that its UK arm was distributed through Rising High from 1992 until 1994. At the exact moment Frankfurt’s harder trance and techno sound was becoming influential in British record boxes, Pound’s operation supplied a formal route into the UK rather than relying only on scattered imports.

Rising High also looked west. Its licensing relationship with Underground Resistance connected the label to Detroit’s independent-techno tradition. London rave, Frankfurt techno, Detroit futurism and the ambient room could all meet under the same company. That is one of the clearest reasons Pound matters historically: he helped British rave hear itself as part of a wider electronic culture.

His own work kept moving as well. Rising High Collective, New London School of Electronics, remixes and related projects pulled him through techno and trance beyond the first Hypnotist period. Fever Called Love remains closely associated with Pound and the Rising High world, while its earliest release trail belongs to R&S / Outer Rhythm — a catalogue detail worth keeping straight.

His reputation remained particularly strong in Germany, and a surviving recording from Tresor in Berlin on 27 December 2003 catches Pound — The Hypnotist — still performing only months before his death.

Caspar Pound died on 30 April 2004, aged 33. He left a catalogue far larger than one alias and a label whose influence came from refusing to choose between the rave floor, the techno room and the chill-out space.

His place in the Hall comes from both sides of that story. As an artist, he made records that belong to the sound of early-90s rave. As a label founder, he widened the routes through which British ravers could hear the rest of the electronic underground.