Disco is dead. Luckily for the Oxford Art Factory occupants on Sunday night, Erol Alkan arrived just in time to precariously place a pair of sunglasses on the corpse, dance around with it and wave its arms around like it just didn’t care.

Before Alkan did grace the ‘ol ones and twos at the respectable hour of 1AM, Beni did a fair job of keeping the weary Parklife crowd – clad in cut-off jeans, stripy singlets and dirty vans – happy by playing an easy-listening mix of Knightlife style nu-disco and ‘80s nu-wave pop before finishing with an extended mix of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Relax. Shuffling around in place, everybody surprisingly still had their drinks in hand, and were generally keeping their shit together quite well, considering Parklife had ended only a mere few hours beforehand.

The Oxford Art Factory seems to have been experimenting with the layout of the DJ booth in relation to the dancefloor of late, and whilst the dancefloor has been generally well-placed in the large open area in the middle of the club downstairs, the DJ booth has found itself in odd places such as on the mezzanine level, behind the bar, in the girl’s bathroom and in the pocket of the gentlemen who inspects for stamps at the door. For Disco 3000, it was suitably placed opposite the stage on the furthermost wall from the bar, which allowed opportunistic punters a handshake, high-five or photo op with Alkan. It also spared the crowd the standard ‘everybody’s posse behind the decks’ syndrome Sydney seems to be suffering at the moment.

As Alkan touched down, everybody expected him to display some of the legendary skills that earned him the title of “UK’s Number #1 Favourite DJ” and it would be fair to say that he didn’t disappoint, however it would also be fair to say the title may not be based around skills alone. But really, who would care to think about such things. It was time for disco!

Alkan began his set with an ensemble consisting of a multitude of disco breaks; tons of tom rolls, snare rolls and bongo, congas and glockenspiels, all looped, compiled and layered upon each other in a style in which would make Grandmaster Flash proud. The only difference in this case being that Alkan had taken the leg-work out of the actual mixing and prepared his own cheeky edits beforehand. The edits had an abundance of hip-hop and legacy style DJ techniques programmed such as change-ups (lots of change-ups), one-bar funk drum fills and double drops – in this case, included to skip vocal sections instead of the usual thirty-two bar breakdowns of today’s dance music – and loops! Oh the loops! If a description were to be given as to how many loops there were, it would probably say something like there were a lot of loops!

About half an hour into his set Alkan began to drop some full-ish songs, and unfortunately the depth of this reviewer’s disco knowledge doesn’t run quite as deep as it probably could – compared with Erol Alkan, for instance – however a few of the newer songs’ original versions were to be heard, like the original From: Disco To Disco, Til’ West and DJ Delicious’ Same Man, all cheekily re-cut and overlaid with original hi-hat and snappy snare combos we know Alkan to be famous for. Alkan did drop a few other notable ditties including an ultra-cheeky dub re-cut of The B52’s Love Shack and a few sneaky snippets of ABBA.

As mentioned above, the beat mixing may not have been flawless, but with a concept that aims to take original disco songs and re-edit them into a context which makes them appropriate on a modern dancefloor, it becomes about track selection, and here, Alkan was the King. Flicking through his enormous CD wallets, Alkan took us on a journey through disco to Italo right through to the end of disco, which is known as Hi-NRG. A genre popularised by key songs such as Donna Summer’s I Feel Love and whilst this song may not have been played, it would have been at home amongst many of its counterparts.

Synthesisers, drum machines and vocoders were the theme of the second half of Alkan’s set as he guided everyone through Hi-NRG to early house tunes and into back into the present nu-disco themed genre known as ‘re-edits’, where all songs complete with twisted blippy synth lines and epic Gary Numan style string breakdowns with feature tracks from The Revolving Eyes (_Space Models_) and Faze Action (_Stratus Energy_), much to an enthusiastic reaction from the crowd.

Those who couldn’t last until the end without fresh air, cigarettes or a casual gabber with friendly street folk found themselves outside and much to their dismay, locked out of the club after an accident involving a police women forced all Oxford Street inhabitants to evacuate the immediate area. Unfortunately this cut the night short for those involved, including this particular reviewer, but at catching at least half of an once-in-a-lifetime set is better than not catching it at all. Alkan’s podcast of the same name did not come even half close to the energy and consistency imparted upon the crowd. If before it wasn’t evident why he has become the darling DJ of the UK it should be now.