Listen to DJ Erol Sabadosh’s ‘Best of British’ Playlist for Gladson
Renowned British DJ Erol Sabadosh is New York based DJ, music producer and audio engineer originally from Bosnia and raised in London. Dubbed one of London’s most “prolific” DJs by Dazed & Confused Magazine before moving to New York where pretty soon Billboard recognized them as one of New York’s top “tastemakers.” After putting out a track on Legendary Chicago House label Trax Records Erol recently dropped Staring at the Sun independently, an old school influenced hip hop track mixing lush synths with boom bap drums featuring Texas rapper Ron Wayne, and is getting ready to release a mini album that continues with a similar sound, mixing trap, boom bap, indie, lo fi and rnb, titled Pushing Up The Roses.
Who’s your biggest influence, and why?
It’s really hard for me to pick one influence as the biggest. Growing up I played guitar and so it was Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin for a while, then it was Jack White from The White Stripes, then Julian Casablancas from The Strokes, then Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest… yet despite being a club DJ there’s no other band or artist I’ve listened to more than Low, a small band from Minnesota who’ve been putting out slow tension-filled music for twenty years, almost the opposite of what I would play in a venue. If I had to pick one person though, I think it probably would be Julian Casablancas just because The Strokes are who really made me want to be in a band and get up on stage which I did from around age 16 to 19 before DJing took over.
Tell us about your journey moving from London to New York…
I always loved American film, music and literature for some reason, Jack Kerouac, David Lynch, Miles Davis, Richard Linklater, Jimi Hendrix, Quentin Tarantino… these were the artists that were taking up my attention as a teen and over time I went from feeling like I could never possibly live anywhere other than London because I loved it so much, to wanting to make a change and feeling like I needed it in order to challenge and invigorate myself and so there was almost no question that it would be America for me. I had encouragement from a few friends including DJ Jodie Harsh (never underestimate the power of keeping supportive people around you) and so I just put my life savings together to try to get a visa and move and it worked out, shout out to my immigration lawyer Joe Adams in Los Angeles whom I’ve never met in person but who helped me immensely.