Erol Alkan plays Bugged Out! The Birthday Party at The End

Indie kids do it with heart

Erol Alkan plays Bugged Out! The Birthday Party at The End on 21 October; www.erolalkan.co.uk, www.myspace.com/erolalkan The End, 16a West Central Street, WC1, 020 7419 9199

Archway-born Erol Alkan is the founder of the legendary club night Trash, an eclectic evening of electronica, indie, punk and pop that has a history of staging live shows from unknown bands who hit the big time, including Scissor Sisters, Bloc Party, The Rapture and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. A pioneer of the bootlegging scene, the 6ft 4in DJ has remixed tracks by Franz Ferdinand, Mylo and The Chemical Brothers. He is a resident at Bugged Out! at The End.

How did you start DJing?

A mixture of fluke, boredom and cockiness. I went up to a promoter at the club The Automatic in Leicester Square and asked him if I could play. He paid me five pints of beer, later raising it to £5 to include travel, which was probably fair at the time. I was so bored of what was being played in clubs. My mates and I were listening to such different stuff.


What did you listen to?

Pearl Jam, Nirvana, My Bloody Valentine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, music from the indie scene. I loved Manic Street Preachers, but you’d certainly never hear that in a club. When I started DJing, I remember playing Radiohead’s Creep for the first time and getting chastised by ­everyone. They said, “You can’t play that, it’s too slow”. But the point is that you don’t have to play testosterone-charged music non-stop. Anyway, ­indie kids dance with their hearts and not their feet.


Are you still an indie kid?

I always have been. Everyone wants to make the ­distinction between dance music and indie, but there’s no reason why they can’t sit side by side. And, of course, there was that beautiful ­moment in British music when the two came together with the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays.


What’s the idea behind Trash?

Playing great old and new music on a s**t-hot sound ­system. Also, keeping it as cheap as possible. It’s still only a fiver, the same as it was nine years ago.

How does your Trash set differ to Bugged Out!?

It differs wildly. Bugged Out! is on a Saturday, a kind of reach-for-the-laser-stars night of celebration. Trash is more of an alternative disco, playing a lot of music I couldn’t play anywhere else. It’s on a Monday, so there are a good deal of students at Trash as well. It’s a difference of tempo, really.

How much technology do you embrace with DJing?

I always have done. When I started DJing, I used to use vinyl, CDs, cassettes, even VHS – I used to record episodes of The Word and project them on to the wall. Now, I use iChat a lot. I’m often online talking to other DJs such as Felix da Housecat. Quite often we email each other tunes. Or other producers will email me tunes – they’ll finish the tunes at 8pm, email me at 8.30pm and they’ll be spun in one of my sets at 12am.


Do bedroom producers email you their music?

They do and I always listen to it. It varies quite a lot in its quality; a lot of it does sound like bedroom production stuff, but a lot of it is good. It’s like listening to records in a record shop: half of it’s good, the other half rubbish.


What remix work have you been doing?

I recently remixed Scissor Sisters’ I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’, which came off pretty nice. I also remixed Hot Chip’s Boy From School and Daft Punk’s The Brainwasher.


Who are acts to watch?

The Long Blondes are a great rock band from Sheffield. Keep your eyes peeled.


What other genres have you been discovering?

I’ve been getting into a lot of krautrock from the late Sixties, as well as Turkish progressive rock. I’m also really into psychedelia. Under the moniker Beyond the Wizard Sleeve, I and another DJ often rock up to pubs and play ten -hour sets of psychedelia.