Colin Faver came into music through the punk explosion. He left commercial art for Small Wonder in Walthamstow, working around the shop and label as bands like The Cure and Bauhaus were making their first moves. His own DJ break came warming up shows at the Marquee, and he promoted concerts through the post-punk period before club culture pulled him deeper behind the decks.

When Camden Palace opened in 1982, Colin became a resident and stayed through most of the decade. The important bit was his appetite: electronic music, electro, new wave, disco and the strange records arriving from America all belonged in the same conversation. Alongside people such as Mark Moore and Eddie Richards he helped British club crowds get used to the idea that DJs could join the dots rather than simply service one genre.

So when house and acid house arrived, Colin was ready. He played Shoom, Hedonism, RIP, Pyramid at Heaven and the Wag, and carried that sound out into the growing rave circuit. Haçienda, Orbit, Rex Club in Paris, squat parties, free events and the huge M25 gatherings all became part of the map.

His rave CV reads like a set of foundation stones: Raindance, Energy, Biology, Sunrise and more. But Colin was not just collecting famous bookings. He was moving with the music as it changed, which is why the next chapter matters so much.

At Rage at Heaven, Colin was resident while breakbeat-heavy rave music was mutating towards hardcore and jungle. The same instincts showed up on radio. As one of the early figures at Kiss FM, he used his shows to put new house, techno and emerging breakbeat sounds into bedrooms and cars across London long before many listeners could get into the clubs themselves.

Techno became another mission. Through Abstrakt Dance and the Knowledge nights associated with Colin Dale, Faver helped give British audiences a direct line into Detroit, Chicago and the harder European edge. Knowledge brought artists including Richie Hawtin, Sven Väth and Joey Beltram into UK club culture at a moment when the audience for that sound was still being built.

That is why Colin sits in a different category from a DJ who simply had a long career. He repeatedly arrived at a musical turning point, understood what was happening and gave it a platform. Punk into electronic club music. House into acid house. Rave into breakbeat. Techno as its own British underground culture.

He remained active long after the original rave explosion, later moving towards deeper house, soul and radio work including Mi-Soul. The ego never seemed to be the point. People remembered the warmth, the curiosity and the fact that he would still turn up for the music.

Colin died on 5 September 2015, aged 63. Tributes came from house, techno, jungle and the wider club world because each part of that culture could recognise something he had done for it. His legacy is best heard on the tapes: one DJ moving through several futures while they were still becoming the present.