Ok… I feel kind of weird stealing an entire interview… but it must be done. A-Trak is, in my opinion, the best DJ ever. I’ve been a big fan for some time now. And so I follow him religiously. This interview is really interesting, and showcases some stuff that hasn’t really been out in the open until now. Props to Erol Alkan for doing the interview:

How has this tour with Boys Noize come about?

Well, we noticed that we both have strong unibrows. Everything basically stemmed from that. I met Alex about a year ago. Not long after, he asked me to do a remix for him. I took months to do it because I’m not very good at time management. We started talking about more projects we could do together, I think it started with the realization that I hadn’t played in Germany in years and then we just figured we’d do a little tour together.

Do you feel you have a similar approach to Djing as Alex? You have both been djing since the age of 13.

In a sense, yeah. That came as a surprise too. I spent most of my career in the hip hop world, heavily into turntablism, up until just a few years ago. Alex told me that’s how he started too, but he made the transition into electronic music much earlier than me. When he mixes he really manipulates his records a lot. There’s always something going on. You could say that about my style too.

There are some great second hand vinyl stores in Montreal, do you still buy old vinyl?

Not as much as I used to. I still buy vinyl but it’s not a necessity like it used to be. As far as second-hand vinyl, I used to go digging when I was producing hip hop beats, looking for samples. Now when I sample it’s not really loops anymore, I just use little snippets of sounds for their texture so it could be anything really. I’m not as dependent on finding those perfect records, so I don’t dig nearly as much. But yeah, Montreal has some amazing shops. Any city that has a port will have good record shops.

Your logo has a heavy metal aesthetic. Are you a fan?

I can’t really say I am! I just like the aesthetic. I like the attitude, the bad-ass quotient is very high. That logo is quite recent. My designer Dust La Rock did it just a few months ago.

Tell us how the Nike Running Man came about? Was it a challenge?

Nike approached me a year ago. It was pretty straight-forward, and it came at a great time for me. My priority last year was getting more of my productions out, but I wasn’t quite ready to make my own record yet. That’s why I was doing remixes, producing tracks for Kid Sister, and this Nike Original Run record allowed me to make my own record without the pressure of it being my first album. The biggest challenge was the length! They ask for 45 minutes. That’s a lot for a record that’s essentially instrumental. There’s one part with guest rap vocals, and they made me cut out one of the verses due to lyrical content. That’s why the version that came out is only 43 minutes long. You heard it here first!

Are you a fan of LCD’s 45:33?

Yes, in a big way. The first song is amazing. Sonically the whole record is so rich. LCD are great at stretching out their songs and making these lush, seamless transitions. That’s interesting to me even as a DJ.

Have you jogged to it yourself?

No I’m afraid of jogging. I remember getting cramps under my ribs in high school. I don’t want to go there anymore.

As a close ally of Kanye West how do you feel you may have influenced him musically? Any samples you’ve pushed his way?

Ah, the Daft Punk question. Yes I was the first person to play him “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”, about 2 years ago. But to be fair, I didn’t tell him to sample it. In fact when he told me he wanted to sample it I got this big “what have I done” feeling. He waited months to do it. Then one day out of the blue he emailed me the beat like “hey check this out”. The drum pattern was so singular, I loved it. When Kanye first came on the scene around 2000 making beats for Jay-Z, he pioneered this style of sped-up soul samples where he’d keep vocals in the sample. People used to call them chipmunk beats because of the way the sped-up vocals sounded. It was unorthodox to have a guy rap over a beat that already had a vocal in it, but it worked. When I heard the “Stronger” beat I liked how he kept the vocoder in the track during the verses. To me it was like a new interpretation of those old chipmunk beats. But boy was that a hard one to mix down.

Aside from Daft Punk specifically, sometimes we would be on tour and I’d have an afterparty or a side show on an off date and Kanye would come watch me. He’d hear me play these Baltimore Club edits of popular records mixed with some electro stuff, some of my own edits where I’d put rap vocals and club chants over house records and he was really open to it. At the same time I was starting to make music with Kid Sister and I’d play him that too. So sometimes we’d be on tour and he would just ask me “play me that stuff you were playing at the club last night.” All his friends would sort of roll their eyes but he really picked up on what was sonically interesting there. This is when he was starting to work on his last album, Graduation, which had a heavy electronic influence. When he finished the album Kanye would tell a lot of people that I influenced the sound of that album, more so than me. I still have a hard time taking credit for a lot of that. At the end of the day he made that album what it is, not me.

What did you make of the Kanye/Justice MTV awards face off?

I think people took him too seriously. He was definitely half-joking. When he said “my video cost a million dollars” he was taking the piss at himself. But knowing that he can still come off like a crybaby when he says things like that, when I saw it I still shook my head and had a sit-down talk with him a few days later… which is funny because he’s older than me and I look up to him. But I know him well enough to feel comfortable saying these things to him. In fact the MTV awards scandal was literally 2 days before the tour that I was just talking about where he came out and say me play all these electro records. He had never heard of Justice and I remember telling him something like “look, these guys are kind of the most exciting group in music right now. You were once the underdog that was championed by your peers and now you made it. When there’s other groups that are coming up doing interesting music you should encourage them too because they’re probably looking up to you.” Then I played him their music. Justice has really strong pop melodies and that’s the kind of music Kanye likes the most so he liked it a lot.

What are the choicest cuts on your Fools Gold label?

Treasure Fingers “Cross The Dancefloor” which is coming out in a few weeks, that’s a huge one. Kid Sister “Pro Nails” was a big deal for us last year. Kid Cudi’s “Day ‘N Nite” with the Crookers remix. I honestly think that’s their best remix. Jokers of the Scene “Baggy Bottom Boys” is a big rave anthem, also coming out soon. I’m really into this Nacho Lovers single that we’re putting out in the fall. Every time I play it people come and trainspot my laptop.

What’s your favourite Chromeo tracks?

“Momma’s Boy”, maybe because it’s about my mom. Of course “Needy Girl”. I’m especially fond of some of these songs because I remember all the stages and how they got to the final versions. I also love “Tenderoni” and “100%”.

Which dj’s and producers do you rate in the UK at the moment?

Well Erol as far as DJs in the UK, you’re not too bad. There’s a lot of UK producers that inspire me a lot. Of course there’s Switch, I don’t understand how he thinks. Sinden and Herve, I love how they use hip hop samples. I really like how Fake Blood and Boy 8-Bit use breakbeats, it’s something I can relate to. I’ve also been playing a lot of Shadow Dancer stuff lately. There’s a couple of bassline records that I really love, like the Wideboys’ “Project Bassline”.

How did you come about working with Laidback Luke on the future club smash ‘Shake It Down’?

I reached out to Luke to remix the Treasure Fingers track a few months ago. It was a complete shot in the dark. I was just discovering the Swedish House sound and guys like Laidback Luke and Bart B More. Mehdi was the first DJ I heard playing songs like “Get Dumb” and “Break Down The House” when I toured with him last fall. So we wanted to make a big package of remixes for “Cross The Dancefloor” and my partner Nick suggested Luke. He was like “just reach out to him, some of those guys must know you.” I got his email from Junior Sanchez and gave it a shot. Turns out that Luke knew me since my DJ championships 10 years ago, he knew that Chromeo is my brother, all this stuff. He did the remix and killed it. Then at Winter Music Conference I went to see one of his gigs. We met, talked a bit and I asked him if he’d be down to do a track. He was like “yeah come to Amsterdam, I make a song in 4 hours”. He wasn’t lying. In May I toured Europe, went to visit him on a day off and we made that track in an afternoon.

Tell us about the track you have coming up on Kitsune?

The first track on Running Man is called “Say Whoa” and I decided to make a single out of it. I got remixes by Sinden and Boys Noize and Kitsune is putting it out this fall.

Be honest, did you sign with Kitsune just so you could get a little cartoon drawing done of your head?

Yes.

When you and your brother ran a record shop were you snooty like Jack Black in High Fidelity?

Haha… Well I didn’t run the record shop, that was just him. He was a 21 year-old smart-ass with encyclopedic knowledge of every credit on every rap record and I was his globe-trotting star DJ little brother. His rap record shop shared a space with Tiga’s dance record shop, DNA. They’re both defunct now. But that was the breeding ground for Tiga asking Dave to make a record on Turbo, which was the birth of Chromeo.

How are you going to approach your album? Will your bro be on it?

Well my bro helps me produce a lot of my music. He’s never there when I’m producing but I always send him snippets and get his feedback on my demos. I’m not sure if he’ll literally do a guitar solo on my album but he’ll be closely involved for sure.

Like everything that I’ve been doing lately my album will sit somewhere between rap and electronic music. I’ll have a few guests but not on every song. It won’t just be a collection of tracks that could be singles or DJ tools. A lot of it will be interwoven and if there’s a guest I want them to pop up when you don’t really expect it. I guess the 2 people that I’m closest to in music are my brother and Kanye and I think they both make albums that you can listen to from start to finish, so I’m hoping some of that will rub off on me!

You have a Pointer Sisters track in your chart. Have you checked their song Automatic?

I looooove “Automatic”. I love the lyric about x-ray vision, and how the singer pronounced the word “down”.

And that’s the word!
-the judge

Posted on July 29th, 2008 under Music • Tags: A-Trak, Erol Alkan, Fools Gold, Interviews. • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback