Quote

The essential component of being a DJ is setting the mood it's playing to the context. So that if you're not able to adapt from one context to another, then you're not a DJ.

A-Trak

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A-Trak
Age: 42
Born: 1982
Born: March 30
Composer
Disc Jockey
Dj
Entrepreneur
Musician
Record Producer
Recording Artist
Singer
Montreal
Quebec
Alain Macklovitch
Another
Able
Component
Adapt
Context
Mood
Setting
Essential
Playing

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I worked with him for years. I still think Kanye [West] is one of the most important people in music in the last ten years.
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We have to wake up early and make songs everyday. I run my record label. You work at hours where your body isn't designed to work. But it's fun.
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There's a ton of amazing music that's not getting heard.
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There's a bit less elbow room and latitude to take it somewhere else, at least at festivals. In the club you can do whatever you want but at festivals, especially Ultra, nowadays the crowd wants to hear our songs.
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Now I'm able to play on the main stage and play my own tracks and the crowd likes them. I feel like a lot the other DJs play a lot of the same songs, and not to knock them, but it's important to me to go up there and sort of sneak in a bunch of stuff the other guys aren't playing.
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That was my challenge then, how to make scratching still fun for someone who didn't necessarily come to hear that. It was fun to develop that technique. And now in dance music - I'm still a hip-hop guy at heart, but I love dance music.
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I have a radio show on Sirius XM. I put it up as a free download on my Soundcloud and on iTunes. That's a portal for me once a month, to play songs I know aren't getting played on that station the rest of the week.
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It's a good feeling to have something to stand for in any part of your life. It's like personal integrity.
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Traditionally, with a DJ set, you just go hear DJ that has a good reputation and let the DJ take you somewhere. It was up to the DJ what he wanted to play. Typically in dance music, people didn't know most of the songs a DJ played.
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A few guys will get up there with turntables as purists, to play vinyl or whatever.
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When you know what you like and what you want and you're able to nudge things in the right direction, that's more profitable than ever, because there's so much information out there. Everything's saturated. Tastemaker is probably the most overused word, but I still think it's important.
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When I get up I still check the rap blogs before I check any kind of dance stuff.
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I think one of the biggest things that's changed in terms of the rapport with the crowd is that now crowds come to hear our songs. We're getting closer and closer to an artist performance.
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I think whether dance music had exploded in America, I still would've been a DJ a long time. This is my first love.
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What's amazing about a DJ set is when you're able to re-appropriate a song or give purpose to a song that people didn't really think it was supposed to have. Give it this sort of hidden power by playing it before this song and after that one. That it fits into this logic and it goes farther than you thought it could go.
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At festivals you kind of have to play the game a bit and you have to play a lot of the big bangers but it's to me it's extra gratifying to be able to play the non-bangers and make it work. Because that's still the craft of the DJ, I think.
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I've been doing it since I was prepubescent when I loved to scratch records and play good music. As it happens, you know I sort of fell into the mix. I really feel like I played a role in bringing dance music to America years ago.
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I love disco and we sample it a lot for Duck Sauce. For me, that sound is kind of a new manifestation.
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I like getting feedback from people who show a lot of potential, and it's exciting to witness to new talents developing and bourgeoning. I always try to stay around the newest stuff, I don't like to stay with something that's kind of old or approaching it.
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Right now it feels like we're playing a role, like me and a couple of my friends, in where popular culture is going. That's a very rare thing in a person's life to be able to be a part of that. It's a responsibility I take seriously.
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