‘There are always people out there, standing in the shadows, thinking, ‘This is bullshit. I know I could do better,’” muses British DJ, remixer and producer Erol Alkan, speaking to me whilst wandering The British Museum in London on a rare day off.

“Those are the people who do end up doing something better, not the people who just jump onto something and do the same thing as everyone else.”

Alkan may not have been speaking explicitly of himself with this comment, but he’s certainly described his own motivation and career trajectory. The man who would later come to be known by his mash-up and remix aliases of Kurtis Rush and Mustapha 3000 got his start DJing in the early 1990s. At 17, he blagged his way into a first gig by impressing upon a club manager that he could and would bring something different to the tables.

“I was invited back and, from that point on, I’ve had a gig every single week for the past 16 years,” Alkan chuckles.

Raised on his parents’ record collection, which skewed heavily towards The Beatles, Stones, Turkish and Greek music, and later discovering the joys of Boney M, disco, New Order and other ’80s electronic music, Alkan came by his dual love of rock and dance musics naturally.

He rose to prominence in Britain by promoting this very blend at a weekly club night called Trash. It was an unlikely success, happening on a Monday of all nights, but Trash ran for a full decade, from 1997 to 2007, and became one of the most name-checked events for anyone paying attention to the rise of dance music with rock elements and attitude, and vice versa.

A night for “the odd and the mod,” Trash featured indie-rock tunes mixed with soul, R&B, disco, new wave, hip-hop and almost anything in its two rooms. It also became a harbinger of new musical trends and rising underground stars, hosting live performances by artists including Bloc Party, Peaches, LCD Soundsystem, Mylo, Radio 4, The Long Blondes and Death From Above 1979 and guest DJs like The Glimmers, Tiga and 2 Many DJs.

“We were never exclusive to any one sound or genre,” recalls Alkan of the night’s core appeal. “We were playing so much more than just rock and dance music so it was never like a pendulum swinging more to one side than the other — it was like there were six pendulums swinging and some that we didn’t even see.”

It tends to be easier to see things in retrospect. After a full decade of packed houses, accolades and awards (including Mixmag’s DJ of the Year title in 2006), Alkan and crew called Trash quits.
“I had the best time I could possibly have had in running Trash; it was just time to put it to rest and move on,” Alkan explains. “It won’t be the greatest achievement of my life. I strive for something greater at all times.”

Indeed. Alkan, it would appear, rarely sits still. The past four years have seen him remix a pile of artists — many of them friends from the Trash days — including Mylo, Bloc Party, Daft Punk, DFA ’79, Franz Ferdinand, Hot Chip, Klaxons, Justice and Interpol. He’s also been hired to produce new and forthcoming albums by The Long Blondes, Mystery Jets and Late of the Pier.
“I think that’s me done with bands and albums for a while now though,” he shares, having just finished production duties for Late of the Pier the previous day. “I’ve done three albums in a year and a bit, and I want to do different things now. I’ve never done anything in the careerist sense so I don’t want it to be a career, like ‘I’m a record producer now — get me a gig.’”

That said, working with others has helped Alkan learn about his own ear, strengths and love of music.

“I’m a big fan of songs, and I always have been. People connect with songs,” he distills. “I’ve always said that indie kids dance with their hearts, not their feet. When you soak a song up, it lives through you.

“I’m constantly trying to find the way that I can excite myself musically. I started off DJing for selfish reasons, and I’m probably still doing it now. I just want the music that I like to be aired.”