Twenty years ago I went to see a gig by Moby despite some reservations about what I expected to be a night of coffee-table ambient electro.

There was a bit of that – he performed most of that multi-million-selling blues-pilfering album Play – but I was not prepared for the ear-splitting techno that made up the rest of the set.

Nor for the fact I’d heard most of those dance anthems – Go, Hymn, Move, Drop A Beat, Next Is The E – long before I’d ever heard of Moby.

Making the evening more exciting was the fact it was at The Garage, a small venue in Highbury, rather than the vast arenas where he normally plays, with a state-of-the-art lighting rig.

I’d been indifferent about going but I was properly blown away. I haven’t heard much about him since – though I did once bump into him on Rivington Street in downtown New York, where he had a vegan cafe and tea shop called TeaNY.

Anyway, he’s made about 50 albums and 100 singles and videos to date, plus a documentary film promoting his vegan activism – Punk Rock Vegan Movie.

This is from a new one, featuring a host of collaborations – in this case with his fellow vegan, the late Benjamin Zephaniah. And he’s touring for the first time in a decade this September, though nowhere as intimate as The Garage.