Erol Alkan Quotes

One thing I always found hard to stomach over the past few years is that being a DJ or musician is a career opportunity.

Obviously like many of us, I love music, and I hate music sometimes.

Thank you to BBC6 Music and Something Else for the opportunity to broadcast my corner of electronic and alternative music across the airwaves for the last 6 years. #‎ RIP6MIX

About 20 years ago, I had a dream in which somebody sang one of the most beautiful melodies I'd ever heard, and gave it to me, and warned me not to forget it. Of course, I did forget it by the time I had got out of bed. Now as precaution, my phone is overloaded with half sung melodies.

I wish I could do something else, I wish I was an amazing painter or a brain surgeon or something, but it's just what it's been.

I think the two sides to me are the same as two sides to anybody. In relation to the link between doing the label and being a DJ, it goes back to the thing of necessity. It's the only way I feel I can do something creative that's going to satisfy me.

Instinct is the most powerful thing you have, and you have to trust it.

Guidance is everything, you have to accept that somebody is their own person, an individual.

When someone walks into my room and goes 'wow' at my record collection, at that moment I could actually hate music and just want to go sit in the garden.

Running a label in 2013, you don't do it for any financial purpose, you do it for all the amazing creative aspects of what you can achieve.

It's all gravy when everything's great, but if there comes a point where there's a problem, as with any kind of relationship you need to fix it. There's always going to be something, and it could be the smallest detail you'd never have expected or it could be something substantial, but it's how you deal with things.

Everyone is going to prang out at some point. I don't worry about that stuff too much because most things can be sorted out with a chat, a cup of tea and an arm wrestle.

It's getting to the point where, to be honest with you, even though there is a lot of great music around, especially in clubland, certainly from my corner of something I just felt like I needed to get my hands dirty and DJ out.

There was certainly a space I felt for me, don't complain about it not being there, make it.

Sometimes something has a value, it has an instant quality to it, and that's all it needs to be.

I don't know what genre I've fallen into, I don't know where it is, and that's really exciting.

There's zero correlation between owning music and being a greater music lover or musician than the next person.

All the best bands have a language, and what they say within that language makes it is what it is.

I think I just want to make and be part of great records, because of what it brings to other people, what it gives back, is so incredible.

I'm sure that there are many situations in life that are going to offer the same risks and pitfalls that you have to get past. That's just life.

You can't live life being afraid, because fear censors ambition.

I love the idea that the person that signs you makes the record, because you get that sense of guidance, of being there at that close point.

I am an indie kid. I made no bones about the fact that I fell into DJing electronic music by accident, by a lucky break, but it doesn't make me any less of a fan of that music, I just never envisaged... not through a lack of confidence or belief, I just didn't think that I'd be sharing the bill with people that I was going out to see myself.

You have to follow your instinct, and that's what I've tried to do all my life, whether in music or anything.

Break eggs to make omlettes, never be complacent or think 'I've got a career here, I've got to keep it going'.

I like the notion of guiding, because I can offer advice through my own experiences, tastes and beliefs. But it's all in that individual's hands.

I don't know if this is a good thing to say, but the musical obsession has almost shifted to a creative obsession now.

If you can't frighten yourself, I don't think you can excite other people. And I like being frightened.