With one of the most eclectic discographies in dance music, the only thing Erol Alkan can be safely relied upon to do is surprise you. Even a brief interview with inthemix revealed Alkan to be a very interesting character, at once opinionated and non-committal; incredibly passionate yet difficult to satisfy. In answering my opening question he is amusingly indecisive about labelling himself as indecisive.

Going through your discography, I noticed you’re usually working with something, whether it’s another person or band, or an already existing piece of music that you’re remixing. Why do you think you gravitate to that kind of music making more than just starting from scratch on your own?
I find it far easier to do that – to collaborate or to remix somebody more so than just to start from scratch because…well I’m kind of very indecisive, you see. I kind of do a lot of things and then don’t really tend to. I mean, I do a wide variety of things on my own but then I’m never too sure which ones to put out. Although, I am collating a lot of that at the moment…but yeah, I do obviously find collaborating quite easy.

Do you prefer the creative process when there’s another person there?
Yeah I think so, only because it’s faster. And I don’t like things hanging around for too long. And there’s definitely far more of a creative flow. I mean, I do remixes on my own. They’re very easy, but writing original material…I’m kind of…I’m very hard to satisfy.

I’ve listened to some of the remixes of ‘60s psychedelia songs you’ve done as Beyond the Wizard’s Sleeve and they’re really interesting. Do you play those sorts of tracks in one of your normal DJ sets, at a festival for example?
I have done, yeah. I used to play the Midlake one [ Roscoe ] quite a lot – right in the middle of the night just to reset people’s senses a little bit. I like doing that at the moment actually; I like in the middle of my set just dropping something that’s far calmer and less accelerated than the club music. I really like that variety.

I’ve just done a remix of Connan Mockasin – he’s an artist from New Zealand who I’ve signed to my label – and it’s a ten minute, very beautiful, spatial track, and playing it in the middle of a techno set I find extremely refreshing.

It’s also completely out of synch at the moment as well, because everyone is so hell-bent on, and I quote, “killing the party”, and being as over the top as possible. I feel that going further than those guys is actually going the other way.

Okay, fine, everyone’s saying disco is my reaction to it, but I quite enjoy playing techno and I quite enjoy playing accelerated dance music, but I like to put a bit of a curveball in it by just dropping it right down for about 20 minutes in the middle of a set, and then just taking off again.