David was born in Uganda in East Africa.
Across the road from the little mission house was a night club which boasted live afro-pop bands most nights of the week. While his parents may have bemoaned the disturbance, a warm and rhythmic score was being written to the little ears already working overtime.

Attendance at an English boarding school; and the classical education began - choir, violin, piano and extravagant musicals. Later came schooling in Oxford and a degree at Cambridge University. In 1992, specialising in Experimental Psychology for a Masters degree he studied fatigue effects in long studio sessions and founded SaltLight International Productions with his brother Philip.