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Following last year’s epic 7 hour set at Bugged Out, this April 21st Erol will return to Fire to play an all night long, 8 hour set. To celebrate this we decided to get members of Erol’s Forum to come with eight questions they’ve always wanted to ask:

1. Your top 5 DJs, from any era up to and including now
Jonathon and Eko, they were the DJs who used to play at Loony Tunes, the first club night I visited. It was a local indie night, and they kind of formed my whole ideal to what clubbing was cause there was such a community spirit there. And for me that was the first thing I felt in there, even before the music.

Boys Noize, cause I think he’s a fantastic, brilliant DJ, as well as almost like an archetypal modern DJ, which is also an A&R as well. He obviously finds a lot of new music for his sets which he then releases on his own labels. And I think he’s doing that all the right way, in a really strong way as well. It’s hard to pick a top 5…but it’s a good question cause it kind of forces me to think about it, and for me personally it’s the people who formed my perception of what club culture kind of was, and from what I’ve experienced it’s someone like Andrew Weatherall, whose remixes I heard before I heard his DJ sets because I wasn’t really going to those types of clubs at that time. I was always kind of imagining what it was gonna be like, and then when I finally heard and experienced it I loved it.

Ron Hardy because, you know, just hearing the variety of DH-sets that he put together through the ages. And obviously he’s been so well documented, there’s loads of his DJ sets that you can find and it’s amazing to listen to what he was pushing in that year, what he discovered in this year and what he was doing in other years, and it is really inspiring to hear his versatility. And I love the fact that he was pretty punk-rock as well, how he would pitch everything up so fast. And 2 Many Dj’s of course. The first couple of gigs I did with them were us playing to almost nobody. The first time we actually technically DJed together was the day I first met them, and they were playing to 3 people on the dancefloor, at Dingwalls after a gig of theirs as Soulwax the band. I went up to them and introduced myself, saying like: ‘heey, you’re DJing at my club’, it was like an afterparty thing, and they went: ‘Yeah, you’re Erol. Hey can you look after our records for a moment?’ So they went off, came back and we started playing records together. And I knew then, you know when you have a kind of déjà-vu feel, that I met kindred spirits, and then seeing how that thing has blew up, and seeing how it’s developed and where they’ve taken it has been inspiring. It’s such an energy that I’ve had around me which will always be part of me.

2. How much of the Turkish/Cyprian culture remains in Erol Alkan?
It’s a good question, cause I don’t know. I’ve never lived in or visited Cyprus, and I speak fluent Turkish, but that’s from being born as a Londoner and picking it up from my parents. I also only found out recently I couldn’t speak a word of English until I was 5. As you get older you become far more conscious of your roots I suppose, anyone does, and I feel it’s important to teach that on. I think it’s important to teach my children English, Turkish, a bit of French, or any of our neighbouring languages. But yeah, I don’t really know what the culture exactly is, so I’m not really aware of how much remains in me.

I love Turkish music as well, but only the cool stuff! Like the records I’ve played in Beyond The Wizards Sleeve or Disco3000 sets, that kind of stuff is great. It’s good to discover music that you can understand on a different level. A good example is that Selda record with that amazing guitar break, which was used on a skateboarding computer game of all places, is actually an extremely heavy political record: It’s like a protest song, one of the lines says ‘The coal is burning thin’, explaining our society’s been worn down: no education, no help. When I first heard it I was blown away, an amazing example of mixing politics with such danceable music, and coupled with that amazing guitar break, it’s a complete juxtaposition. That’s why those people went electric, so they’d get the attention of the young people. Those fire-y political songs were put forward in that way,so for me it’s quite funny seeing people treat it as this cool track, while it’s subject matter is dark.

3. Your bio states that you snuck out of your parent’s house to DJ when you were a teenager. What music did you play back then and where did you play it?
I used to play Verve b-sides, Manic Street Preachers, Smiths, Suede & Kinks records, Primal Scream. Mostly alternative music, but also 60’s music that I liked, and then some kind of dance music, and I used to do it all at a place called ‘Gas Club’ at Leicester Square, which is probably still there, and the night was called Automatic. The first few months my payment was 5 drinks, and at that time, when I first started djing, to even get a free drink was a big deal. I used to sneak out the house, play, come back and pretend I haven’t been out…it was only for a few months though, till my parents got wise to what I was doing. To be honest, if it’s the year 1991 or whatever year it was, and your parents have never been to clubs before, you tell them, and I was like 17 years old at the time, ‘I’m going to nightclubs to play records’ then they don’t know what it really means.

This was just after Acid House as well, and the way the media, who hated clubs, portrayed it at the time was something illegal with people doing drugs and dying on the dancefloor, so when you tell your parents you’re going to a club then it’s quite likely that’s what they know off it. They don’t see the reality of a guy playing a Verve B-side to 15 people on an empty dancefloor. They think it’s a heaving sweaty mass of people dancing, being arrested or dying, so that’s why I reckon, and also because of their background, they were thinking ‘why are you going there?’. I’m sure if they’d came along to see it, they would’ve been like ‘ooh it’s not as we thought.’

4. What would be the perfect job for Erol Alkan if you weren’t a Producer / DJ?
Well this ain’t a job anyway, so I don’t know. I’ve always said I’ll do whatever I need to get by. If I had to dig graves for the rest of my life then that’s fine. This really doesn’t feel like a job to me so I can’t really answer that.

5. What unreleased song has got the biggest crowd reaction when you first started dropping it in a club/festival (i.e. a song that almost no one in the crowd could have ever heard before)?
White Stripes – Seven Nation Army. I had the acetate for it. The guy who signed White Stripes came to Trash, and he brought it for me. He came up to me and said ‘John Peel isn’t getting this till the end of the week, you’re the first person to have it, the track is called ‘Seven Nation Army’ and it’s a monster’ so yeah, any chance I get to play a record before John Peel I would take y’know? So I listened to it on my headphones, cued up the track which I thought would fit after, dropped it and the place just went nuts.

But there’s also mentions for the first time I played Soulwax – NY Excuse, or even Lemonade, that was pretty nuts. That was in London at the Decked Out anniversary. We made it the day before, played it that night and the reaction was just incredible.

6. Did you ever have to compromise any feature of Trash (or any other night) which you thought would ruin it slightly, but then actually worked out for the better?
If you feel you’re gonna do something that’s gonna slightly ruin one element but make another far better then do it! Cause the very fact you think that will help it in some way. At Trash we had a really harsh dresscode, which a lot of people thought was a little unfair, but it kept the club exciting and to a degree it supported the people who came initially and built it. We could’ve made 4 times more money, there were nights where we’d end up losing 800 pounds because we put a band on and had to hire enough equipment for Wembley arena. Or we could’ve made more money by hiking the door price but we didn’t and I think that’s why we were able to sustain it for 10 years.

It could’ve fallen apart after 5 years but thankfully it didn’t. I always say treat your club like you treat your home, as in which people you let in. We had many different people there, from different walks of life, all dressed different, it was all about the attitude that people showed up with. We wanted the misfits and people who felt they couldn’t belong elsewhere, not punters.

7. If you could erase one song from history, what would it be?
I wouldn’t. The thing is, if a bad song influences someone to react against it and they then create a good song it deserves its place. How many punk bands hated and rallied against Pink Floyd? They would’ve deleted them if they could, but then they also wouldn’t have a career without them; they wouldn’t have a reason or an agenda without that hatred. Those things that you hate sometimes can be the most important things, as it tells you what not to do or be. You shouldn’t try to delete it, in fact you should look for it, look for things you hate, as that’s gonna form your agenda or some form of direction for you.

8. Do you still have your cat Cassius, and if so, what do you feed him?
Cassius had to move out when my flatmate moved out, as she mostly took charge of him. Unfortunately I wasn’t around enough at the time, so we decided it would be best if he went with her. He’s actually in Paris now, so he’s good, and obviously far more fashionable then before…

And a bonus question: Yo’ll be playing the whole 8 hours from SD Cards onPioneer CDJ 2000′s, can you tell us about your new style of DJing?
I definitely feel inspired by playing with SD cards, as I have more ability. And I don’t have to wonder where a certain song is on a cd in my pouch, I find it far more liberating. And also, I can bring more music and it’s all organized to a degree. I could’ve done it with a laptop, but I don’t want to bring a laptop with me into a nightclub, personally. I’m afraid I’m gonna lose it or empty a drink on it. And also I’m not into all that wiring you have to do with Serato or Traktor, it’s depressing. I think it’s the coolest thing to just be able to turn up, pull your SD card out of your pocket, pop it in, bang, and that’s it. For me it’s revolutionary, the same way as when I moved away from vinyl. But now with this I feel like I’ve gone back to an element that vinyl had, which I’ve never had with cds. The best gigs I’ve had playing this way have been twice as good as when I played with CDs.