A-Trak's diary

DJ Lessons for Playboy Bunnies

2008/08/30T00:00:00-0500

My publicist set up a feature for me this week and she later admitted being scared that I would mail her an anthrax letter. I should really send her flowers instead. Why did she think I wouldn't like this? I just spent an afternoon with a Playboy playmate. To be specific, Kelly Carrington, Miss October.

It all started when Playboy said they wanted to feature me in their March music issue for something called Rock The Rabbit. That alone is awesome. Then they decided to do a whole web video thing with me. Thank heavens for online added content. The plan was to have me spend an afternoon with a contest winner and a Playboy playmate. I was asked to give them both a DJ lesson and then go to some fancy lunch. Sure it's all pretty tame but in terms of quirkiness it's right up my alley!

I got picked up by a car service at noon and they took me to the Scratch DJ Academy, which was only open to us. I met Playboy's marketing people, the special Playboy bodyguard and Kelly. Everyone was really excited to learn how to do that zigga-zigga. We were just waiting for the contest winner-slash-intern, and they kept saying "you're gonna love this guy". I wasn't sure how to feel about this idea of being out with another dude and Miss October. What is this, ElimiDate? Then homeboy showed up and this guy was an exact real-life replica of McLovin. Right then, everything fell into place. So I gave them a little DJ lesson on camera. Kelly was impressed by how difficult it is to scratch. They made McLovin wear these wrap-around sunglasses, which was really funny because he wears normal glasses too so he'd try and wear the shades on top of his spectacles. His name was John but I'm just going to call him McLovin. After that they filmed us doing "OTF's" -- that's reality TV slang for "on the fly", those little summaries where you say stuff like "working with Kelly and John was an awesome experience, I think we had great chemistry". That TV show Orange City Choppers had really good OTF's, come to think of it.

After that a tinted SUV drove us over to the Gansevoort hotel where there's a lovely rooftop terrace and half of the pool was reserved for us. There were still people in the other half and they looked pretty puzzled, glancing at our motley crew as we filmed a bunch of random shots. We were filmed receiving a bottle of Veuve Cliquot, compliments of the house, and some strawberries with whipped cream. There was a massage train that felt very summer-camp-y, and the Playboy security guard gratuitously tossed McLovin into the pool. A couple more OTF's and we called it a day.

It was interesting to learn about the life of a Playboy bunny. Kelly recently moved to LA where she lives in a house with a few other bunnies, although they don't see each other very often because they're always going to shoots and whatnot. Apparently they have their meals at the Playboy mansion.

The video will be up in October... Stay tuned!

Another Weekend, Another Continent

2008/08/22T00:00:00-0500

I don't even know what time zone I'm in anymore. I just know I have a couple of pictures from last weekend that I wanted to post, so that warrants a blog post. Last Friday I flew to London for a gig at this venue Plan B, down in Brixton which is kind of a roughneck neighborhood. During the afternoon I went over to Herve's house and we finished a track together. (This is the part where you bloggers are supposed to get excited!) Then I did my gig, it was a hip hop party. I realized that in the course of the summer I played in different corners of London. River Thames, you're next.

Saturday morning I took the Eurostar over to Belgium to do Pukkelpop. What a great festival. When those things are well organized it's such a joy. I was sharing a dressing room with those jolly Italians known as the Crookers and it was actually the first time we met, even though they have a record coming out on Fool's Gold. (Hello!) My set was action-packed, I played for a couple thousand raving central-Europeans and they were singing soccer chants at the peaks. I stuck around to watch a few acts, most notably Jamie Lidell and 2 Many DJs. The catering was excellent. And then I went back to get some much needed rest.

The next day a driver took me on a 3 hour journey over to Amsterdam. Laidback Luke had one of his Nighttime Superheroes parties over by the beach (yes they have a beach in the Netherlands) and I was the special Canadian guest. The party started pretty early. I got there at 9pm and Luke was on. This was not my usual crowd. Reminded me of when I played the Hamptons a little over a year ago (Bobby Brown, Smooth B and Eric B showed up that day). There was a guy with a Chromeo shirt though. After Luke's set I went and plugged in Serato (as ubiquitous as it is in America, they have no idea what it is in the European dance world) and did my lil' thang. Diplo and Santogold were in town so they came through with the Santo-entourage. I was done at midnight so after my set we all headed to the city and Luke's manager took us to this funky ass club with low ceiling and 70's lighting and we danced the night away, me, Wes and Martelo and some Dutch ladies.

You internet hawks probably heard my track with the Laidback one. It's coming out in October on Fool's Gold in America and his label Mixmash in Europe. We're only getting one remix per continent so you can imagine those remixes will make your jaw drop. Fiyyaaah!!

I'm in LA now, bout to do some more shows. So, more blogs coming soon!!

Attack of the Unibros!

2008/08/04T00:00:00-0500

This fall, say no to tweezers.

Boys Noize and I are embarking on a spectacular world tour for the ages. Europe in September, select North American dates in October... (West Coast, we'll hit you next time!) It's a peaceful union between Germany and Canada, all for the sake of DJing and baseball caps.

Oh and that title isn't a typo. It's uniBRO because we're bros, bro. Shout out to the Bro Bro Brothers.

Flyer and logo designed by the great Nick Catchdubs.

Four Fast-Paced Days of A-Traking

2008/07/21T00:00:00-0500

On Friday, Saturday and Sunday I did 5 shows in 3 cities. You know what that means? A new blog for you, that's what. I'm gonna throw Thursday in the mix too because I did some pretty neat stuff. So strap on your blog seatbelt and get ready for the ride.

Thursday I was invited to the Nike ID studio in NY to design some custom kicks and they filmed the whole thing with some interviews to tie it back into the Running Man campaign. Since I don't know how to design I brought along Dust La Rock and Kesh for some help. When we arrived they had a whole team waiting for us. Nike staff supervising, interviewers, camera crew, people to help us design, etc. I felt pampered.

We made 2 shoes, one inspired by the Running Man cover and the other for Fool's Gold. I think they're gonna give them the special homie treatment and make a couple extra pairs for us. Then I got interviewed for Nike Sport Music and Nike Women (woohoo!). Dust said I look like Stevie Wonder when I do interviews, the way my head moves around. Not sure what to make of that!

Friday morning I flew to Chicago. That's where the madness really starts. I had a live set at the Apple Store to promote Running Man (since it's an iTunes exclusive), then my lady's high school reunion to attend, and then a Pitchfork Festival afterparty at Sonotheque. You know when you go to any Apple store there's always that little theatre where some guy with a Madonna mic is giving a lecture about iPhoto and how your Mac is the centre of your digital life? That theatre is where I did my in-store. I think the best part was the posters, they looked so official. They were also announcing it at Niketown down the street. Anyway I got there, wolfed down a burrito and got on stage for my hour-long thing. A couple kids came out specifically to see me and the rest of the people were just passers-by from the store. My set was totally improvised because of course I'm not gonna go to a computer shop and play the same stuff I play for drugged out club kids. I also made sure I included a lot of the tracks from Running Man, and I played all the new Say Whoa remixes which you'll hear about soon I'm sure. So anyway that was the Apple event. Melisa's high school reunion was a trip, we had name tags and some of her old friends ended up coming to my afterparty too. And said party was good fun. Sonotheque has a DJ booth that's essentially an aquarium. I've played that club 2 or 3 times before but I've always asked them to set me up outside the booth. This time I played inside and still had a good time. Of course there's less connection with the audience but I just went in there and did my thing through the looking glass.

Saturday I flew to LA for the Hard festival. I stayed in a really strange hotel. Usually for a show of that calibre you always get nice accommodations. This spot was chosen for its proximity to the venue, from what I'm told. In LA talk they said it was 5 minutes away. In reality that's a 15 minute drive with no traffic. It was in this Japanese neighborhood. From the hotel looked a bit unassuming. The rooms themselves were decent, they had those fancy japanese toilet bowls that heat and wash your bumbum. But no room service! I took a nap and woke up at 10pm. My homie Ibn rolled through. I was told we could get food at the restaurant on the 2nd floor. They didn't tell me it was a karaoke restaurant. Everything was really small in this hotel so we were right next to the inevitable big group of Japanese businessmen singing country songs. Then we bounced to the venue with Jesse from MSTRKRFT. Steve Aoki was playing before me and a rather inebriated Felli Felle was hosting on the mic. Those 2 made a very entertaining duo. Apparently Felli played my Stronger remix earlier in the night. The stage set-up was dope they had all these LED screens, and also a gazillion people hanging out up there. The first 10 minutes of my set was complete troubleshooting mayhem. There was this big monitor right next to me and as soon as I started playing it would cut on and off really fast like an off-beat transformer scratch. So it was pretty much impossible to mix the first couple of records I played. I just kept talking to the sound guy and trying to fix it. It was strange because at times it would seem like it was only one turntable doing that or that it would only happen when the levels were too hot but then something else would happen that would completely contradict that. So after a few records I just shut that monitor off, walked over to the other side of the stage and turned the 2nd monitor way up and that worked out great for the rest of my set. Once that was settled everything went quite nicely. Standing on tables and the whole nine. My set ended at 2:30am and as soon as I was done I had to jet to the hotel, take a quick shower and head over to the airport to catch a 6am flight.

I landed in New York at 2:30pm and the Mad Fools Summerstage party started at 3. I was on at 4. Needless to say it was strictly carry-on steez this weekend. So I jumped in a cab and made my way over to Central Park. It was scorching hot in the park. The crowd was packed when I got there. I think capacity was 5,500 and they turned people away. We made Fool's Gold towels for the party. Mad Decent went heavy with the merch, with their Get Mad tees and wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube-men straight out of the used car dealership. We were supposed to have a life-size Mr Goldbar mascot (that's the dude giving the thumbs-up on Le Blog) but the costume turned out to be a safety hazard so we had to dead that at the last second. I figured an afternoon shindig in the park wasn't really the place to go hard with distorted electro so my first record was Mary J's "Real Love". I did about 20 minutes of good ol' NY BBQ hip hop and made my way up to some uptempo party shtuff. Diplo jumped on with some dancers and then we went back-and-forth for a bit. I think the best thing about the whole event was just the overall family vibe. And the super soakers. Boy was it hot. Just when it seemed like the crowd was getting completely numbed by the heat, Santogold jumped on and gave them one last big jolt of energy. After that it was a wrap, everyone went home and unless they were horrible monsters, showered. But that's not the end of my wild weekend. There was still the afterparty at Santos Partyhouse. (Yes, I was billed as DJ Canada.) It's funny how close the word partyhouse is to pantyhose. Anyway that's when I started feeling a bit tired. Maybe it's because that club stays open until 4. It was pretty casual though, the crowd was visibly people who were at our Summerstage party and a bunch of us traded off DJ sets during the whole night. It was a rock-and-roll weekend but at least it's my only gigs for the month. I'm just holed up in the home studio working on some music, getting ready to unload a bunch of booty-shaking goodies in the fall! Thanks to everyone who came out this weekend. And to everyone who screamed the Orville Redenbacher line at Summer Stage.

Gelato And Rainboots

2008/07/08T00:00:00-0500

I was only back from Europe for 2 weeks when I boarded that cheap charter flight where they fed us President's Choice TV dinners and headed back to Ye Olde Continent. First stop, Paris. I was booked to play a Vice party with that tall frenchman known as Busy P. Before the gig they had an Ed Banger in-store at Virgin where a special guest was advertised. That was me, I'm special. Hard to keep a surprise when I'm the only guy on Serato, going on stage to make sure they have the turntables plugged right. The Virgin Megastore is really big and it was fun to have an all-ages audience. They had us playing on a mixer that I don't know and I spent my whole set looking for the "crossfader on" switch, but aside from that it went well! I found out Kanye was also in town and tried to invite him to our gig but he was in a deep jetlag-induced slumber. We headed over to the club. As I got there I saw my boy leaving the club and he was like "yo let me introduce you to Keith Murray!" I'm not sure why Keith Murray was at my party but I was very surprised that he knew who I was. He kept saying "A-Trak, you're crazy man, you're on some shit." I did my gig and sweated quite a bit due to a broken AC unit. Then as I finished my set around 4am, Kanye texted me that he was awake and his sleep schedule was "jacked". Mine was too, so I decided to go hang out with him after my gig. He was staying at the fanciest hotel in Paris, it was 5 or 6 in the morning and we kicked it for a while, talking about various coming-of-age themes. A few hours later it was time to head to Barcelona.

Sonar is one of the best festivals for electronic music. I call Barcelona party-town. So it's a good combination. I played at Sonar 2 years ago with Diplo, we did a tag-team set together (we actually rehearsed!) and I still get people talking to me about it today. In that sense, the stakes were high. They wanted me, Mehdi and Kid Sister to all do a set together. They billed us as "DJ Mehdi vs A-Trak ft Kid Sister" which, as reflected in this post, has daunting mathematical implications. Before we could solve them, Kid Sister actually pulled out of the gig because she was in the studio finishing her album. It was back to just Mehdi and me. I got in town, received a basket full of fruit and champagne at the hotel and went to link up with the homies for a dinner of tapas and sangria. They were watching the quarter-finals of that soccer tournaments but I made them bounce before the end because I was hungry! He he... sports. Of course Mehdi and I hadn't rehearsed this time. When we toured together last fall we used to go back and forth playing about 5 records each. The good thing about that is we were really trading off, essentially playing at the same time. The bad thing is it was hard for either of us to take the set in any type of direction because we were constantly trying to keep the energy up after what the last guy just played. So for Sonar we took a different approach. Mehdi played the first 45 minutes, then I did 45 minutes, and we kept the last half hour open to do whatever felt right, just knowing we both really wanted to throw some hip hop in there. It worked out great! Truly one of my favorite shows in a long time. We were each able to play our little quirky selections without having to rely on just the big bangers, which is super satisfying at a big festival like that where you know there's 10 other guys playing those bangers. And it felt so good to play some Biz Markie in that piece! I'm over all that rave shit, it's all about the Biz now.

Well, I can't say I'm done with the glowsticks too fast because the next day we all flew to Ibiza. I just kept saying "A-Trak in Ibiza, who woulda thunk". A few years ago -- even a year ago -- I never would have believed I'd play there. That name is soooo the caricature of big commercial house and techno, well past that thin line of where it's funky, I just couldn't fathom how I could fit there. But we all know that everything is merging in music, everyone is crossing paths and suddenly there are new possibilities. So they booked me, Mehdi and Busy P to play from 2 to 6am at Space, the famed megaclub. I was definitely more comfortable knowing that it was 3 of us and we could make a statement together, musically. I wouldn't have done it by myself. Anyway we flew in that afternoon and my first realization was that the island is really pretty and pleasant. Of course it's pretty, it's on the Mediterranean. But I guess you just don't think about these things. We went to rent scooters and headed to the port to eat some gelato by the water. Then we walked over to the old part of town with cobblestone streets and grabbed dinner at a picturesque italian spot. The main difference between this place and any other small town by the water in Spain or Italy is the people you see walking around. They're in Ibiza for a reason, after all. You see a lot of caricatural guido dudes. A lot of older British music lover types. Some aging hippies, some flamboyant men. And babes, lots of babes. After dinner I took a disco nap and we headed to the club at 1:30. I can't lie, when I walked into that spot I did get a "what did I get myself into?" feeling. That club was huge!! You see that mass of people hypnotized to the cold techno beat and you think, "am I going to clear the dancefloor?" But in fact I think we did well. Pedro set it off first the first hour and he was super comfortable. People started getting really hype, which I think is a little different for Ibiza. I get the impression that clubbers usually go out for long (long long) hours and just zone out while they dance, but we had them going buck. All 3 of us did our thing, it was a lot more hi-energy than the Sonar set and you can't really go as far as playing rap in those big rooms in Ibiza but we definitely had our own identity and put our stamp there. I don't think that crowd ever heard any Three 6 Mafia B-more club chants, but the message of "I love having sex but I'd rather get some head" is universal, isn't it? Sebastian Ingrosso also came to show love and he introduced me to a local booze called Hierbas. That stuff was so good, I bought a bootle to try and impress some models. No fib!

I stayed in Ibiza for 5 days! I didn't want to fly back and forth to America again, having gigs in the UK the next weekend, so I decided to post up there and work on music in the sun. I went to the beach, I had lots of gazpacho, I went out clubbing much later than I'm used to and tried to understand the science of that weird minimal shit. On one of the days I went and visited the Swedish Mafia dudes, visited their villa and they took me out to the famed Pacha club to watch Eric Morillo and Dirty South. I took it all in, it was very educational. I'd be texting with Nick, he was at his hot NY apartment and I was drinking mimosas... I kept saying "I'm doing research!"

Before you know it the week flew by and I flew my ass back to London. This weekend's mission: Glastonbury. My brother played that festival last year and was scarred for life. Glastonbury is known for its mud. It's a huge festival, and when I say huge I mean 120,000 people. You've got all these people walking through fields and it always rains so it quickly turns into a mudfest, so much that you're expected to show up with big rain boots which the Brits call wellies (short for Wellington boots). This is hard to understand for artists. Even if you do a festival where the people in the crowd are wearing ponchos and whatnot, usually on the performer side you're still able to show up wearing you gig clothes. But not here. No one is spared. You wear your bummiest clothes and by George you get yourself some wellies. I understood all that before showing up. But I still ended up shocked out of my mind. I drove down there from London with Mr and Mrs James Ford from SMD (we have the same manager). Lovely couple. I was there for 2 days. The first was meant to be pretty easy, I just had to do a 20 minute set for Annie Mac's live broadcast on BBC radio. I got in, struggled a bit to meet up with my friend who picked up some wellies for me, put my backpack in storage because there's no dressing rooms, went to meet up with Sinden, Herve and Martelo in the catering tent, watched Hercules & Love Affair and walked almost half an hour through the mud to get to the BBC tent. All this was fine, I was in good spirits. I did my set for Annie, it was good fun. Then I hung out a bit, I was hoping to get out of there around 11pm to get some rest. But apparently it was too hard to get a ride before 1am, which is when the day ends, so I stuck around a little longer. You're in a field in the middle of nowhere and it's not even clear where a car would pull up so you don't have much choice. At 1 I was supposed to take some sort of BBC bus to the hotel where their staff was staying, to then grab a taxi to my bed & breakfast, but I never found that bus. I met up with my manager's friends and we were all going to leave together, but it was proving to be really hard to simply call a car to pick us up. I was quite tired, I only got 4 hours of sleep the night before, so the main person looking after me offered that I go lay down in her friend's little "cabin" until the ride situation was sorted. They call it a cabin because it's a bit nicer than the tents that most people sleep in but honestly it was just a dog house, like a kennel. It was literally the shape and size of a dog house and there were 2 small mattresses in there. I fell asleep. I was awoken by a knock on the door. I looked at my watch -- 4am, are you serious? We're still here? I was ready to be like "guys, am I ever happy to get out of here!" but it wasn't my posse, it was the guy who sleeps on that 2nd mattress, heavily inebriated. I tried calling the people I was with but their phones were dead. Great. I'll just sleep some more, I guess. Except this dude starts snoring like a fucking grizzly bear. I'm in a dog house and there's a guy right next to me sounding like a chainsaw. When they finally came to grab me it was 5, and we still had to go find a cab. I got to the B&B at 6, dead.

10:30am, there's a knock on my door. "Sir, you need to check out!" Kill me. This isn't like a hotel where you can just be like "yeah I'm packing my bags!" and sleep for an extra hour. This is just a house and when they say you gotta go, it's because there's a car in the driveway with a family that's ready to come in. Mind you, the main reason why I wanted to rest so bad was that I had to do 3 sets that day! I had my main DJ set at 5pm, then I was DJing for Kid Sister right after me, and later on at 10pm I was booked to play in another tent for Vice. For the first couple of hours I was very grumpy. I had a splitting headache and I was a grumpasaurus rex. At least it wasn't raining that day. The sun was actually out. I got to the festival and there was barely any mud, it was just regular earth and dirt. What a privilege! I had plenty of time to check in with the stage manager and make sure everything was ready for our sets. I got some food and started relaxing. The Kid Sister gang arrived. We did our sets, we played for a crowd that was baking in the afternoon sun so it's always a bit "meh" but it was fine. As the evening progressed I had a few beers and started forgetting about last night's disaster. For a minute we couldn't figure out where exactly I was supposed to play this last set. We finally found the tent, it was pretty tiny and there was approximately 6 people there. But I actually enjoyed doing a laidback set after everything that happened. Jay-Z's set started right as I was ending mine, but we couldn't even get to that part of the festival grounds. Every last person was trying to go watch him and they were closing roads because it got too crazy. So we drove back to London and called it a night. I stayed a little longer in London to play at Erol's lady's party Durrr. I really thought I was going to play for a crowd that didn't know me at all. I was surprised to get there and recognize a bunch of people who were at my last couple of shows in London (Yo Yo, Stag & Dagger, Fabric, all those May gigs). The Cool Kids were in town for a release party of their EP so they rolled through with the freshness. It was cool to meet Rory Phillips, I really like the dude's edits and remixes. It's funny how I actually got booked to play at this thing, Erol's girl saw me do a hip hop set at the Stones Throw WMC party back in March and thought "this would be cool for Durrr". When I got there Erol was like "do what you want, play whatever you want, have fun". And that's just what I did! I played a bunch of my own tracks and Fool's Gold upcoming heaters. The sound system at The End is ill and my joint with Laidback Luke sounded biiiiig. But I really didn't play hard, just a bunch of funky stuff and even a bit of 90's rap for those London indie kids to get open to. Great way to finish up a wild week-and-a-half in the Euro clubs!