Erol Alkan’s ‘Trash’ playlist transports us back to the heady days of the early 2000s

There was a glorious period at the start of the 2000s, when dance coalesced with the indie scene – a dazzling blend of post-punk, electroclash, nu-disco and straight-up rock ‘n’ roll, as represented by artists such as The Rapture, CSS, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Peaches, Justice, Gossip, Radio 4, Electric Six and LCD Soundsystem.

If there was a clubnight that best encapsulated this maelstrom of genres it was undoubtedly Trash, Erol Alkan’s Monday night mash-up, which was launched at Plastic People in London’s Soho in January 1997, before moving to The Annexe and finally The End in 1999. It closed its doors for the last time in 2007.

“People still come up to me and talk about how special a time it was for them, and how nothing filled that gap that it left,” Alkan told The Guardian in 2017, recalling how the musical approach evolved over the course of the club’s lifespan.

“Trash was predominantly guitar music up until around 2000. But when we first heard Felix Da Housecat’s Silver Screen (Shower Scene), it ticked all of the boxes,” he said. “It was powerful, imaginative, mysterious … All of a sudden there was a record that I felt completely embodied the spirit of Trash.”

A couple of years back, Alkan put together a Spotify playlist of some of his Trash favourites, which continues to be updated – as he put it on Twitter the other day, “I made this playlist a couple of years ago, it’s a snapshot of some of the records I used to play at Trash over the years, there’s still more to add as theres so many tracks which are not on Spotify. I promise to get round to it sometime soon.”

To those of us that were in our prime (albeit with slightly weakened livers) during this period, it’s a glorious time capsule, and includes artists ranging from Peaches to Public Image Limited, and from Devo to David Bowie.

After all, as the old t-shirt slogan puts it, ‘E.R.O.L- Keeps Kids Dancing…’ Enjoy! 🙂

[Main photo taken from Libertine Supersport Facebook page]