Six-time world snooker champion Steve Davis is set to perform at the Bloc festival in Minehead, alongside Thom Yorke, Four Tet, and techno legends Jeff Mills and Carl Craig. The unlikely booking comes after decades of hosting a weekly radio show on Phoenix FM, where he plays prog, post-punk, and experimental electronics.
Davis, who has been presenting his show since 1996, describes himself as "like a kid waiting for Christmas" ahead of the festival. He is considering using the stage name DJ Thundermuscle or Rocky Flame. His musical tastes lean towards the obscure, citing artists such as Oneohtrix Point Never, Patten, and Katie Gately as modern-day composers.
His first love was the Canterbury scene of the early 1970s, including bands like Soft Machine and Caravan, before he fell for prog rock. He particularly admires the French collective Magma, known for their 40-minute tracks in a made-up language. Flush with cash from his snooker career, Davis once bankrolled a London residency for the band, paying for them to come over for three days in Bloomsbury.
Davis missed out on punk due to his intense snooker schedule, but by the mid-80s he became a soul collector. He later rediscovered his prog roots and switched his radio show from soul to what he calls "fucked up weird stuff". He now longs to visit Berlin's legendary Berghain techno club, despite admitting he is not much of a dancer. "I'm a foot-tapper, there's no coordination," he says.
