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I'm not even a trained producer. I just keep following my ear and working on stuff until it sounds the way I like it.
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
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Montreal
Quebec
Alain Macklovitch
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Keep
Trained
Even
Producers
Way
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Following
Ears
More quotes by A-Trak
There's a lot of producers that are much more technical or gear-skilled than I am. But I have a pure idea of what I like and where I want to go and I follow that.
A-Trak
That's what a DJ is at the end of the day - someone who leads where the music goes. The only thing that's changed is that in America, people have woken up in the last few years and realized it.
A-Trak
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.
A-Trak
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.
A-Trak
At the end of the day, Fool's Gold is a label that, when I hear something I like, I try to grab it for the label. There's a ton of great music coming out.
A-Trak
It's always important to me to play something other DJs aren't playing.
A-Trak
I think that's becoming the key to where the whole idea of art and culture are going nowadays anyway, is the idea of curation. Knowing what you like. That's sort of the future right now. Molding something, whether it be a roster on a label, or your blog, or a song, or your DJ set.
A-Trak
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
I'm still a hip-hop producer. I never put a label on what I can do as a producer or a DJ.
A-Trak
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.
A-Trak
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.
A-Trak
I was a bit of an outsider in the hip-hop world because I was a scratch kid and people weren't necessarily trying to hear that all the time.
A-Trak
There are things I like, there are things I strongly dislike. In my DJ sets and in my production I just gravitate towards what I like.
A-Trak
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.
A-Trak
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.
A-Trak
I think whether dance music had exploded in America, I still would've been a DJ a long time. This is my first love.
A-Trak
I'm one of the few DJs who uses turntables. I'm the only DJ that's scratching.
A-Trak
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.
A-Trak
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.
A-Trak
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.
A-Trak
