An interview with Erol Alkan

After a quiet year for his label, Erol Alkan and his Phantasy sounds are back. And, yes, it's mean speaker-shaking business with a three-room takeover at FabricLive on Friday. The party boasts a peerless line-up of DJs and secret live acts including recent collaborator Jarvis Cocker, who will be guesting on the decks in the Durrr-hosted room three, the successor to Alkan's legendary rock 'n' rave party, Trash. Meanwhile, Erol will be spinning twice on the night, notably in a back-to-back set with Switch, a former Fabric ressie and one half of Major Lazer with Diplo.

We jumped at the chance to catch up with one of our favourite London DJs - and discover why he is still drawn to outsider music.

You've just worked with Jarvis Cocker on your single, "Avalanche". How did that come about?
'On the last single [with Boys Noize], "Waves", I suggested that we try to get the most pretentious remix that we could get instead of a club remix, so Gonzales did a piano reinterpretation of it. After that, it was a case of how to follow it without going down the route of getting a brass band to cover anything. So for "Avalanche", I thought it would be great to have a spoken word reinterpretation. It's far more challenging than trying to get the hottest producer of the moment to rework one of your tracks. And then it was a case of whose voices we were fans of and obviously Jarvis came straight to mind. I'm a big fan of his 6Music show as well, and I've got a show on there too.'

Do you ever bump into each other?
'We often pass each other in the corridor, actually. Eventually I sent him the track and he agreed to give the idea a go - he recited Leonard Cohen's "Avalanche" over the top, so we reworked the track to fit it. Then we had to clear it with Leonard, so Jarvis wrote him a letter with a CD and he emailed back saying “Yeah, I love it, put it out.” It's really surreal, especially when I'll be at 6Music waiting for the lift and Jarvis will be in it and we'll talk about the new Ewan Pearson remix for "Avalanche". But I wouldn't want it any other way. Everything seems so much more exciting when it's not straightforward. I like the idea of doing music that dark, because I've always been drawn to dark, miserable music.'

Pulp made outsider music for the indie generation, and you make outsider music for the dance generation. Did you ever draw such a parallel?
'I'm more than flattered at that kind of alignment, because we definitely drew influences from the way that Pulp and many of those other bands carried themselves.'

In a Time Out interview in 2008, Jarvis said: “playing your own songs is akin to masturbating in public”. What's your view?
'I agree if you're in a band, but if you're a producer, I don't know if that counts: you're probably making those records to work into your DJ sets anyway. There lies the difference between being a producer and being an artist. If I was to see Jarvis play and he played one of his own records, I wouldn't have a problem with it, but I do wonder what goes through somebody's mind when they do that.'

Does this mean that no one's going to play "Avalanche" on Friday?
'I don't mind playing that because I've split that with two other people, Boys Noize and Jarvis, so I can carry a third of guilt for doing it. But that's a track that's not set out to make people dance…'

You just did a wonderful interview with Stopmakingme for the Fabric blog, in which he jokes that you're both fans of 'weirding out' people on the dancefloor. So it seems like you've always had that attitude…
'I suppose I do have this reputation of playing records to make people crazy, but I think you need to balance that with spooking people out a bit, not making it too easy or too convenient. I've always been a firm believer of challenging people in that way. I don't mind clearing a dancefloor for experimentation's sake - I think it's healthy.'

Are you going to try and pull some weird records on Switch?
'Well, yeah! I just wonder whether he's going to be playing dubstep and I'm going to be playing something completely different. We made a whole load of original music over a few days at my house once in 2009, but it still works. I've recently been playing them out, but I haven't told anyone what they are yet. It might be the first time we've played back to back, actually. Although I think once or twice he's walked into the DJ booth I've been playing in with a CD in his hand and said “Oi, put this on”.'

As you're taking over Fabric, James Murphy is playing at XOYO. Innocent coincidence or brutal rivalry?
'Yeah, up the fucking road! There's never any rivalry when it comes to music and what we do to express ourselves. I'd be going to see James if Fabric wasn't happening.'

Since Trash and then Durrr stopped at The End, no weekday night party has attracted the same number of dedicated students. Why do you think that is?
'I think that's because those mid-week parties were always driven by alternative music, and it's not what it was before. It has changed radically and has adopted the sensibilities of dance music, which were always about the weekend. It's always been like that, though. It's like the song "Losing My Edge" [by LCD Soundsystem]: “I hear that you and your band have sold your guitars and bought turntables/I hear that you and your band have sold your turntables and bought guitars.” But Trash felt so much like it was of the time: I would have hated to be doing Trash now and be playing house music because it wouldn't have been what it was about. These days, a band is alternative if one of the members has a beard! After 2005, indie bands became cool in a different way to how they were cool before: indie was far more of an outsider term 15 years ago, or maybe just post-Britpop. Let's just blame Britpop!'

You can tell Jarv that.
'Yeah, when I next pass him in the corridor!'