erol erol!

erol alkan. what a man. i first came across him in 2003 on a covermount cd for the (sadly now defunct) magazine muzik. to put this all in context. i read an interview with seb fontaine in ministry in august 2000, in which he said that when he was a kid at parties, controlling the music was all about power, about making sure the girls couldn't get at it to play duran duran. nowadays he conceded it was about making people dance, and that girls on film would probably sound great in a club. on this erol alkan cd, what was track three but girls on film! the cd featured a thrash punk reworking of harder, better, faster, stronger, some awesome tracks from people like codec & flexor, thin white duke and so on. so i was instantly a fan. then in 2005 he released his mindblowing bugged out/bugged in mix, which is easily one of the best mixes i have ever purchased. the rapture mixed with josh wink. sebastian's dolami, willow's song from the wicker man for god's sake! awesome. he even played four times in dublin last year, but i somehow managed to miss each show. for his first mash-up gig i was sick. i couldn't find him at the trinity ball. i had no-one to go see him with when he played in marlay park. his second mash-up gig was the night before i flew to prague at 5 am. then he played oxegen, but i was in chicago. so as soon as i saw he was set to play tbmc again, i was there. and what a night it was.

he started off with his remix of i don't feel like dancing, he played go, he went through an absolute stormer of a set which featured switch's remix of bump, the smd mix of the klaxons' magick (and that it was), the soulwax remix of standing in the way of control which touched upon simian's we are your friends (of course he didn't need to play that, the crowd sang it all), and he ended it all with daft punk's one more time/aerodynamic. and then of course he was coaxed back by the obligatory screams of "one more tune." and then he played aforementioned rapture/wink mashup before making a bit of a racket with his franz ferdinand remix. simply awesome.

but the night was marred by my missing the nitelink and having to walk to rathmines before i got a taxi. ah well...

i messed around with ableton for a while today. i don't know if i'll ever get my ahead around it. you can do some lovely things with it, but i honestly can't imagine ever djing with it. crazy. apparently gu29 was mixed on ableton. i wonder about that. if you can mix live with vinyl/cds/effects units why not do the same in the studio? this is of course coming from someone who's not quite so adept... what's it they say that taking apart is the trade of those who cannot construct? the truth of that statement always troubles me...