It’s not clear whether Ronika knows how good she is.

Not that she is overly bashful about her music – she is rightly proud of the years of work she’s put in and her ethic of self-determination – but when the idea that she might achieve pop success is mentioned, she narrows her eyes and becomes guarded in her answers, as if this is a very strange suggestion. It’s not that odd an idea at all though: her songs are sophisticated but have hooks for days, which are extremely easy to imagine coming out of the radio, and are precisely what saves her from merely being a retro act.

Yes, she heavily mines eighties freestyle, disco-boogie and pop (and rocks a look that combines glam and dishevelment in a perfect balance evoking early, new wave Madonna), but there’s an immediacy and force of personality to her songwriting – and a club-honed directness to her production – that blows all that aside. Despite being named after a legendary record shop in her hometown of Nottingham, ‘Selectadisc’ is not “record collector pop”, it’s the real deal. She’s someone who revels in being part of a living music scene, as became very apparent once I got off the subject of popstardom…

So, first album is always a symbolic thing; do you feel like there’s a step up? Are you speaking to a different audience?

Yeah, well, I’ve just done interviews with NME, The Mirror, Mojo, The Observer, various bits and bobs. All the other releases I’ve put out have had quite nice press actually, but yeah, this is the first time I’ve had features, so that’s different. But it’s an independent release, so it’s all pretty laid back, I’m not overwhelmed by it or anything. My only real concern is the vinyl coming back on time!

Was the album something you were always working towards as you put out your earlier stuff?

Hmmm… I’ve had a steady stream of singles, EPs, but I did want to do something that felt cohesive as a whole. It’s fine to just keep putting stuff out as often as you can, and I make new stuff all the time, but I did want to do something that felt like a vision, a sound, something coming together.

It’s a really pop album – do you see yourself at a point where you might call yourself a pop musician as such?

Sure, yes, at its heart it is a pop record – but it draws on lots of other more underground influences, dance influences, hip hop, and obviously the predominant thing is that it’s influenced by a lot of eighties club subgenres. So there’s a pop theme but there’s other influences in there. But am I a pop artist? Ummmmm…

Well in blunt terms, could you picture yourself standing next to Jessie J and Tinie Tempah at some T4 event?

[stoney faced] No. I’m a producer, I’m a DJ, I see myself as somewhere in between really. I still DJ, I still produce, and those are things I like to do – writing and singing songs is another part, but not the be-all and end-all. I’m not ashamed to make pop music, not at all, but I really don’t think I fit alongside those kind of big commercial pop names.

What if one of your songs were to really blow up on a commercial level, though, would you play the game, do those kind of gigs – the Capital FM, T4 kind of stuff, the TV appearances?

I’d have to take it as it came. Some things I’d do, some things I might not do. I’ve not been in that position so I really don’t know. But look, the decisions that I’ve made with the record, I could have gone down a mainstream route – I’ve had offers, people wanting to turn me into a mainstream pop artist, and I’ve turned them down to do what I want to do, to do my vision which is obviously having my own elements in the production and keeping my own influences and sound. So yes, so far, I have avoided some of what you’re talking about already. I didn’t want to be told, “We’re going to put you in the studio with a load of pop producers.” I have worked hard to produce my own stuff, to learn how to do that, to get my own sound, and it was important to me to get some of that into my own record. It was important that what I’d learned didn’t get lost.

You started clubbing quite young and remain connected to the club/DJ world – how did that influence your style?

OK, I started going out when I was 13, 14, and it was for the music from the beginning. This was under the influence of one of my brothers. I’ve got two older brothers and one was really into electronic music, and from a REALLY young age he got me into everything from Metro Area to A Guy Called Gerald, early Aphex, Carl Craig…those are the sort of things I was exposed to. I absorbed them, and wanted to hear those sounds in a proper setting as soon as I could. In parallel, my other brother was more into pop, alternative, new wave stuff like New Order, The Cure, Pet Shop Boys, and those were influencing me as well. A lot of this would be in house parties, because in Nottingham there’s a lot of soundsystems that would come and set up in a house. So that was my playground really.

OK, that’s interesting – so do you think seeing it being done in that very DIY sort of setup has fed through into your own need for self-determination?

Definitely! It was really a very organic, DIY sort of scene. In fact, one of the soundsystems was called DiY – so yeah, it did feel like something you could get involved with, whoever you were, without any sort of mystery or barrier to getting in. I did start out handing out flyers for clubs, just to get involved and help me get in, because I was obviously too young [laughs], then I started working on cloakrooms and stuff. Then I started going down a local studio, from the age of 14, just to start trying to pick up on that side of things.

So you wanted to make specifically the kind of music you were hearing out, even at that age?

Yep, was listening to so much electronic music, and hip hop as well, and I knew the beats were as important to me as writing songs, so my first thought was to get into the production side. I did start the guitar when I was 13, so I had been playing around with writing songs, but the production idea was what grabbed me.