started with A, B and C. So I was like: ‘Oh right. That’s
easy. ABC, 123’,” he laughs. “Sometimes you need a
little thing like that going ‘Hi, it’s fine, this is it’.
“It may have just taken to this point to feel that I did
have the right things that I wanted to share with
people,” he continues. “I didn’t want to add to a pot
of music and it be like, ‘Oh, right, well here’s my bit’.
And then there it is for like two weeks. Disappears. It’s
very important for it to resonate in a way that I felt
was right for me. I wanted to make a record that had
an emotional weight to it on one hand, but also had a
strangeness and obtuseness to it.”
PHANTASTIC MAN
It’s largely the success of Phantasy, which has gone
from a singles club to an album-releasing imprint,
that has put him in a position where he not only feels
comfortable putting out his own records, but also has
control over how they’re released. Equally important
are the artists around him on the label, who all work
closely together. Alkan is executive producer on
Avery’s album, which was recorded in the Phantasy
Sound Studio and co-written with James Greenwood,
aka Ghost Culture. Greenwood’s currently putting the
finishing touches to his debut album in the same room,
and Alkan’s in the same executive producer role. Avery
sees this kind of “stable” set-up as akin to labels like
Factory, Creation and, more recently, DFA. “It allows
the artists room to grow and develop in their own way,
I think it’s very important. It’s a constant flurry of ideas
between us all, and I find that very exciting.”
Alkan’s been painted as a sort of mentor to this group
of young producers, but Avery counters that reading.
“I’ve learned a lot from him over the years,” he says,
“and he’s full of great advice, but I’d imagine that he’d
rather be seen as someone who can simply encourage
artists. He’s very much into letting acts get to places in
their own style.”
Alkan likens the studio process to cooking with
someone, where roles aren’t demarcated and creativity
is the sole aim. “It’s like you’d ask them, ‘Can you whisk
those eggs?’ or ‘I’ll go fetch a pint of milk’. You both have
to be prepared to change your shape to accommodate
the input of the other person. But it’s never about a
defining, clear line. ‘I do this, you do that.’ Because
that’s just horrible. You start off in a creative situation,
then you’re outlining things, and saying: ‘Actually, if
you have an idea, it might not be as good as all the ideas
“Erol Alkan’s drowning beats”, a term he admits he
“absolutely loved”. Now, that electro growl he veered
from has all but disappeared outside EDM circles, and
deep is du jour.
“He’s never done anything that’s outstayed its
welcome,” says Rory Phillips, who ran Trash’s second
room for seven years. “He has a very good sense of
knowing when to stop. He’s always looking to the next
thing to challenge himself.”
CHASING PERFECTION
We’re sat in the kitchen of Alkan’s North London home,
a step up from the bedsit, just a couple of miles down
the road, where he lived before Trash exploded and he
became one of the most in-demand DJs on the planet.
Alkan’s six foot and then some, a looming presence
onstage, but in person he seems somehow slighter,
less imposing. It’s perhaps because he stands slightly
hunched — a legacy of 20 years leaning over decks set
up for smaller DJs — and in his black-on-black jeans and
hoody holed at the elbow, an almost teenage uniform,
his slim frame seems even slighter.
His parents are Turkish but Alkan was born and raised in
North London, and an accent lightly colours his quiet,
deliberate voice. The longer we talk over cups of tea,
058 djmag.com.au
the more he tries unsuccessfully to smother yawns.
We’re speaking in the wake of a heavy finish at the
Warehouse Project where he closed after the Chemical
Brothers (“they’re not, you know, an easy thing to
follow”), then a much-delayed, much-diverted train
back from Manchester. When we part ways three hours
later, Alkan’s heading up the stairs to bed almost before
the door closes.
Such is the life of the touring DJ. His schedule’s been
cut back recently though, after two decades of playing
“at least twice a week, sometimes eight times a week”.
He smiles. “Once you bring children into the world, you
can’t be at Heathrow every weekend. Or you don’t want
to be. I want to enjoy all this.”
There is, currently, much to enjoy. Alkan’s label,
Phantasy Sound, celebrated its sixth anniversary in
2013 with two of the year’s strangest yet strongest
albums — indie oddball Connan Mockasin’s ‘Caramel’,
and Daniel Avery’s ‘Drone Logic’. But most excitingly, it
also saw the long-awaited release of Alkan’s first solo
material. When we spoke to him 18 months ago, Alkan
hinted at hard drives cluttered with his own music.
But pressed on release plans, he worried that it was
something “people wouldn’t expect from me”. Back
then, alongside his string of entertainingly named
re-workings (Erol’s ‘Durr Durr Durrr Remix’ of ‘Waters
Of Nazareth’, for example) he’d released a smattering
of collaborations with Switch and Boys Noize, and was
promising more. In fact, he promised us “a release a
month until the end of the year”. No dice. Nothing, in
fact, until last December’s ‘Illuminations’ EP. A trio of
tracks that, frankly, sounded exactly like what you’d
expect from Erol Alkan.
It’s not that they rehashed old ground. From the serial
evolver, that would be unexpected indeed. Rather,
when you dissected them and held individual organs
up to the light, you could see their gestation in, say,
the acidic tweaks of his remix for Tame Impala. In the
interwoven melodies of his take on the Klaxons’ ‘Golden
Skans’. Even the anthemic, slap-bass spin he gave
Metronomy’s ‘The Bay’.
The trio of tracks on ‘Illuminations’ have, Alkan admits,
“been knocking around for a while”. Both ‘Bang’ and
‘A Hold On Love’ started as elements from other tracks
that Alkan pillaged and reworked, and ‘Check Out Your
Mind’ has gone through various iterations. Later, when
Alkan takes us down into the Phantasy Sound Studio,
which he recently finished building in the garage at the
I have’. Which is nonsense.”
Partly, this stems from Alkan’s experience helming
indie bands like the Mystery Jets, Long Blondes and
Late Of The Pier, all of whom have recorded albums with
Alkan behind the glass. As when working with dance
producers, he sees his role as part collaborator, part
enabler: “Understanding what this band or what this
artist wants to say”. At heart, Alkan’s still a frustrated
indie kid who wound up making dance music — he coyly
admits to having “shared some stages with some big
names” as a teenager — and he takes pleasure in the
fact that his guitar work has found its way onto some of
the records he’s produced.
“So it’s never bothered me when people go, ‘Why’s
he producing Mystery Jets? He does techno music’,”
Alkan says, his voice rising. “You know what? I spent
my formative teenage years in and out of bands as a
guitarist. I know more about a guitar than I do an 808.
It’s weird when people seem to think that I’m kind of
this indie music fraud: ‘He’s got no right to mic up a
guitar’. Fuck off. I’m interested in learning new things.
In unlearning things. I’m interested in thinking I know
how something works, then realising I’m wrong and
finding a better way of doing something. All this isn’t
— shouldn’t be — one big exam. You’re allowed to make
mistakes.”
PUSH THE BUTTON
Mistakes, newness and discomfort are Alkan’s big
motivators. He revels in strangeness, in discovering
new things. “The thing I enjoy most about being in the
studio with Erol is that it’s pure experimentation,” says
Avery. “Trying out weird processes and, sometimes,
something amazing will come out that you never would
have achieved if you’d simply ‘followed the manual’.
There’s a certain pulse and energy that Erol creates.”
Like Brian Eno, Alkan admits that he often manufactures
awkwardness to force inspiration. Like the time he grew
tired of doing remixes, so only accepted records he
didn’t like, revelling in the challenge of turning them
into something that grabbed him. What he looks for
in a record is something that “pushes his buttons”,
whether good or bad. “People sometimes forget, what
is the point of a track? For me, if you feel cold listening
through to something, it hasn’t really done anything.
It has to be — no matter what emotion it was — that
it at least takes you somewhere.” It’s why he has little
time for
end of his garden — a Narnia of synths hidden behind
half-empty paint cans and forgotten sports equipment
— he shows us works in progress that prove he’s
working with an embarrassment of ideas.
Given working titles like ‘Semi-Detached House’ (“That
will probably change,” he grins, and we feel a twinge of
disappointment), some tracks boast Chemical Brothers
synth riffs that emerge suddenly from thrusting rhythm
workouts, then cross into multi-layered alt-disco that
evokes the oddness of In Flagranti. Then there’s deep,
throbbing techno that breaks down into rave chords
over not-quite-breakbeats. Dutch electro mixed with
deep house chords and acid. Each track seems to
contain an EP on its own, and as Alkan flicks through
the hundreds of Logic files that clutter his computer,
it’s clear that his thin discography doesn’t stem from a
paucity of material.
Alkan accepts that it’s partly perfectionism that’s
kept his solo work hidden. “It ties you down. It can
be a vicious circle. Perfection?” he asks. “What is
perfection? So earlier [last] year I definitely kind of
thought, ‘To hell with perfection’.” Ultimately, though,
a neat coincidence gave him the nudge he needed.
“There was a kind of sign there. Because the tracks all
djmag.com.au 059