If there’s any method to Toddla T’s madness, it’s that he wants to keep his music fun.

“Sonically, I’m right serious about the music,” says Sheffield’s master of digital dancehall. “It stresses me, but it’s gotta be a laugh. Otherwise, what’s the point? I might as well work in a bank.”

Toddla – Thomas MacKenzie Bell – cuts an unusual figure, but is rightfully acknowledged as a wizard of the decks – a DJ, producer and composer who, at the age of just 26, is up there at the forefront of British dance music.

A bedroom DJ since the age of 15, and a proper gigging deck-botherer by 19, his youth earned him his nickname.

But it was his ear for a good tune which saw him taken seriously by people who know about such things – a talent evidenced on 2009’s Skanky Skanky and this summer’s Watch Me Dance. It’s all very DIY, in the best tradition of his city’s homegrown club and party scene – not to mention its influential Warp record label.

“I want it to represent how I was brought up, where it, literally, didn’t matter who you were,” he says.

“My neighbours are Jamaican, British white and Asian. And I want it to represent that.”

Now living in London with fellow DJ and Radio One presenter Annie Mac, and signed to the Ninja Tune label, Toddla has collaborated with souls as diverse as Roots Manuva, Roisin Murphy, Arctic Monkey Matt Helders, Tinchy Stryder, Ms Dynamite and Rastafarian poet Benjamin Zephaniah.

His distinctive genre-bending sound is a result of spending his formative years at parties presided over by South Yorkshire DJ Pipes, and former Warp artist Winston Hazel.

“I didn’t like techno or house until I heard it put together in that certain way,” he recalls. “It’s the electronic sonics of it, I think. They’d play garage, dancehall, techno, whatever, but the music would always have a bassline, and it’d be quite tough, but still wiggly for the girls. It was amazing.”

Now he’s as well-known as a remixer, working with everyone from Little Boots and Ladyhawke to Hot Chip and Tricky.

“When I was first signed, every kid wanted to be in a band,” he says. “The Arctic Monkeys, The Libertines and all that were really popular, and me and my mates who were into Notorious B.I.G and dancehall were really in the minority. Now, kids want to be Skream and Benga, or Tinchy or N-Dubz, and, because of that, all their points of musical reference have changed.”

His latest album, Watch Me Dance, is a testament to that, name checking the roots of house – and the artists who were playing while Toddla was, well… a toddler.

“It has a bit of the soul from Soul II Soul Club Classics and a bit of the left field from Leftism,” he says. “They took in a whole load of club music and made an album that summed something up and were great to listen to at the same time.

“But I’ve been busiest in the last two years as a DJ, so of course this album has a big dose of the sounds and production techniques that I’m out there representing in the clubs every weekend.”

“However, if you’re looking for tops-off jungle or 4x4 bassline tearouts you won’t find them here. This is music for clubbers, but it’s music they’ll listen to at home with their mates or every day on the way to work.”

Toddla T plays the Bullingdon, Cowley Road, Oxford, on Saturday, as part of the Ley Lines Festival.