That A-Trak is one busy man. Somewhere between juggling two big London gigs, remixing Robyn, Jamie Lidell and a lil' bit of Kanye and running his Fools Gold record label, he's finally getting the chance to focus on some of his own material this week too.
A-Trak's currently riding high on the crest of his UK top three hit, Barbra Streisand, with his Duck Sauce cohort, Armand Van Helden, but he says the song could have ended up very differently indeed: “We actually tried the names Neil Diamond and Englebert Humperdinck but there were too many syllables. Barbra Streisand was one of the first names we thought of, it just sounded right. It was funny, we were laughing so much.”
Not only did it crack up the Duck Sauce duo, but it gave A-Trak, 28, his first worldwide smash. “It felt great,” says A-Trak. “I was surprised, we were aiming for top 20 or top 10 but top five is pretty incredible, I've never had anything chart before. That song is just a bit of an anomaly for the chart as it doesn't fit into the typical format – it was such a curveball.”
While a debut album for the Canadian DJ and producer beckons, he says it's been great to get some studio time in during his crazy touring schedule: “I rarely go to the studio at all, I just work off my laptop, wherever I am. If I look at the different tracks I produced or remixed I can remember which different hotel room I was in. So for me to come here is a bit unusual. It definitely helps, I usually don't have that resource.”
In a five-day stopover in London, it was straight to work for A-Trak – known to his mum as Alain – in his Red Bull Studio session, where he simply plugged his laptop into the desk and got down to business.
But despite the wealth of equipment around him, he says he's into keeping it simple: “I'm not really using that much stuff, except the speakers. I use Logic mainly – I am a fan of analogue gear and real mixing desks, the more I learn about production the more I'm intrigued to go and twist those knobs, but everything I do on software just copies what these do.”
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He says making music for him is a new event each time: “I don't have a blueprint or formula with what I do at all. I'm not even really technically trained, I just follow my ears. Every track I make is a new idea, that's why I take so long with remixes. You can never say: “Oh, those were done in the same month” because every time I start a track, I have my own idea and twist to it.
"In the process I have to figure out how to get a certain sound that I haven't done before. I definitely want people to recognise the sound of my production and hear a common thread to what I do. Especially nowadays when there's so much music and everyone is making music you need to have an identity for people to even to have a reason to think about you.
“I might start with some idea that could be messing round with a synth, coming up with a bass-line or a chord and building a beat around it or sometimes I'll start with drums, or with a certain tempo and build stuff around that. There has to be one initial seed that starts it off then you kind of build off that and follow that idea and not get too distracted. It's easy to doubt every step, “oh, is this really the best way?”.
Why, is that a problem for you? “Yeah,” he laughs. “I have a tendency to over-think in life so when I produce I have to consciously force myself to stay down one path and carry out one idea and see if it works rather than doubting every step. It's because I'm a perfectionist.
"I'll sit down and listen to every drum sound I've got in my library for two hours to make sure it's the right one where sometimes you need to think of the bigger picture and make a drum pattern and program that sound. I think in recent years I've learnt to overcome that obsessiveness and follow an idea to a point where you have a demo then you can always come back to it.”
And it's not just his own material or remixes that he obsesses over. Fools Gold – the record label he set up with Nick Catchdubs in 2007 – takes a fair bit of his time too, as he strives to sign all the new music that excites him: “If there's someone that catches my ear, I try to sign them, everyone on Fools Gold is someone I'm really championing.”
Unfortunately, this musical magpie doesn't get to swipe all the exciting stuff for his label and says the other big names for him at the moment are: “Siriusmo, a producer from Germany who I'm listening to a lot and really into. Everything he does is stellar, he's one of my favourites. In the UK, I really like Ramadanman.
“There's a lot of great music coming out right now. I try to bring as much of it to my record label and to as many ears as I can.”
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