Marcus Julian Kaye grew up in Burnley, Lancashire and became part of the North West’s electronic-music culture as acid house and rave transformed the region. Manchester gave him the long-term base from which he would build not only a production career but an entire ecosystem around the music he believed in.

During the 1990s he became associated with Da Intalex, both as a production identity and through the radio show he co-hosted on Manchester’s Kiss 102 FM from 1993 to 2000. Radio mattered to the city in the same way pirate stations mattered in London: it allowed a local drum & bass community to hear itself developing rather than waiting for national media to recognise it.

His friendship and creative relationship with ST Files became central. The pair worked together as M.I.S.T. and helped define a more soulful, musical strain of drum & bass at a time when the genre could often be divided into increasingly rigid camps. Marcus was never interested in softness for its own sake; the drums remained forceful, but melody, emotional weight and detailed production were allowed to carry equal importance.

In 2000 Marcus and ST Files founded Soul:r. The label became one of drum & bass’s most trusted marks of quality, releasing music by Calibre, DRS, Mark System, LSB, Lynx and many others while maintaining an identity that could be recognised without becoming formulaic. The associated Soul:ution nights in Manchester and residencies elsewhere made the label a community as well as a catalogue.

Marcus’ own records — including How You Make Me Feel, Temperance, Universe, Jupiter and a long list of collaborations and remixes — demonstrated an unusually patient approach to groove. He could make drum & bass that felt spacious without losing movement, and his DJing reflected the same judgement.

FABRICLIVE 35, released in 2007, became one of the most acclaimed documents of that approach. Instead of treating a high-profile mix as an opportunity to chase the loudest current anthems, Marcus programmed a flowing statement of the drum & bass he believed in. Fabric later described it as a masterwork when making it available again after his death.

His debut album 21, released in 2011, marked roughly two decades in music. Yet the same year also opened a major new chapter. Under the alias Trevino, Marcus began releasing house and techno, eventually becoming deeply involved in a different international club circuit, including appearances at spaces such as Berghain.

Trevino was not a rejection of drum & bass. It revealed musical interests that had always existed beneath it: Detroit techno, house, machine funk and the possibilities of slower tempos. Labels including Revolve:r and Birdie gave that work its own context while allowing Marcus to avoid trading on the Intalex name.

Marcus Intalex died in Manchester on 28 May 2017, aged 45. The shock spread well beyond drum & bass. Tributes came from house, techno, bass music and the many artists whose work he had released or championed. That breadth reflected a person respected as much for taste and generosity as for production.

His legacy is one of standards. Marcus did not need to agree with the direction of a scene to abandon it, and he did not need to abandon drum & bass in order to explore another genre. He simply kept making space for music he thought deserved to exist.