Session Transcript:
A-Trak
Red Bull Music Academy, Toronto 2007

The video stream for this lecture can be watched here.

We welcome along two of the nicest guys ever to grace the Academy couch, turntable wizard A-Trak and his compadre-on-the-cut, DJ Mehdi of Ed Banger Records. To anyone who has hung around DJ booths for the past five years or so, seeing A-Trak all grown up is almost kind of weird. Looking back on those DMC videos is a bit like watching Drew Barrymore in E.T. The man has stuck all that to one side though and is off in search of new inspiration as we find out through the course of this lecture.

RBMA: »So yeah, OK, this is the more official bit. Please give a warm welcome, all the way from Paris, France, and all the way from Montreal via New York, A-Trak and DJ Mehdi (applause). It’s a little bit like Gulliver’s set up in reverse isn’t it, like when you started out and won those championships it was you on some pedestal trying to reach for the turntables and now you have to lean down like that?«

A-Trak: »It’s cruel irony.«

RBMA: »But it was you who set it up, it was none of us.«

A-Trak: »Exactly. It’s more intimate. The candles on my rider didn’t make it.«

RBMA: »Oh, damn. We must have over read the bit about the candles. So what else do you have on your rider then?«

A-Trak: »Ah, what’s on the rider? Humus, nuts, cashews, preferably. Sometimes promoters get cheap and they give you the nut variety pack but all you want is the cashews.«

RBMA: »Cashews or macadamia, anything else isn’t on. Is that what you learnt when you were on tour with Kanye then?«

A-Trak: »He has cashews. Anything less is just not a legume. This whole lecture is going to be about nuts. Yeah, nuts.«

RBMA: »So what else can you tell us about Kanye’s nuts then (laughter)?«

A-Trak: »How you doing Mehdi?«

DJ Mehdi: »I’m doing fine. I don’t know that much about Kanye’s nuts, I’m sorry.«

A-Trak: »So. This is an improvised lecture as you can tell already but I swear we are going to get into the rhythm of things.«

RBMA: »How do you go from improvising into rhythm anyway because, I mean, you guys usually plan things out in what you call a routine?«

A-Trak: »Yes and no, but lately, the last few years with the schedule being way booked up, I always think I’m going to plan stuff and I end up improvising a lot more. So Mehdi and I are doing this tour together right now. We’re doing a set together during the Fools Gold tour and then next week we’re going to Europe, just me and him, and then we have this whole thing mapped out that we’re going to rehearse for three solid days and come up with a whole prepared set but we’ve been improvising everything.«

RBMA: »So what is Fools Gold outside of 9:53 of brilliant Stone Roses madness?«

A-Trak: »Is that really how long it is? Did you do your research before this interview?«

RBMA: »Funnily enough, I think there’s 9:53, but if I’m not totally mistaken, the song is 10:47 or something?«

A-Trak: »Torsten you are crazy.«

RBMA: »I never really understood that I thought it was some weird numeral with a conspiracy behind it, I thought you might clean it up?«

A-Trak: »Well, this is 9’56 but if it’s recorded off a 12” maybe they played an extra three seconds after.«

RBMA: »So the hiss might be it, in the end?«

A-Trak: »Yeah. Torsten, you scare me (laughter).«

RBMA: »I ‘m sorry. I thought you got over that once you…?«

A-Trak: »That one time I went to see you in Germany.«

RBMA: »Now you’re scaring me.«

A-Trak: »Fools Gold is a label that my friend Nick and I started at the beginning of the year. I was running another label before that called Audio Research, which was ten years old when we stopped it this year. Audio Research was much more of an indie hip hop label from the Fat Beats, Rawkus era, which we kept going, but in the last few years I got more into merging electronic music with the rap stuff that I was producing. Basically, there was a new wave of artists and songs that I wanted to champion and put out. Whether stuff that I was producing or people that were in the same scene as me that I felt Nick and I could really bring together and package with some good artwork and get behind. That’s how the label started.«

RBMA: »Are you trying to say you got bored with backpack [hip hop]?«

A-Trak: »Didn’t we all? In a sense, I mean, it was basically a crossroads, a situation where it was like: “OK, do we try to keep Audio Research going and give it a new image or do we just start fresh with a new brand?” And I think we all really agreed that a new brand made sense. And we’re on this tour right now, the Road Rampage, running through a select run of cities. It’s going really good.«

RBMA: »And just for a point of reference how old are you?«

DJ Mehdi: »I’m 30 years-old.«

RBMA: »Did you, you know, ask for your state pension yet?«

DJ Mehdi: »A what? I’m sorry. Am I retiring? I released my first record in ’92, 1992, so it’s been 18 years. I think we spent more time in the industry than out of it, which is…«

RBMA: »Which is a bit of a weird feeling when you realise that you’ve been going to clubs and all that for longer than you’ve not been, right?«

DJ Mehdi: »But you know what? My wife, for example, who doesn’t really understand this whole thing, always asks like, it’s been three weeks and I’m in the States and I’ve been playing every night, sometimes twice, sometimes three times when there’s an after party or something and she’s like: “How do you still get excited?” Except the fact that it’s Chicago and last night was Vancouver it is pretty much going to be the same and you’re pretty much going to be spinning the same records and I cannot really explain that I do get excited and I do want to do it and I’m always happy and I’m not bored, so I feel good.«

RBMA: »I hope you’re not using her as a reference point because you want to be excited with her for the next 40 years as well, right?«

A-Trak: »I wish I’d plugged in my effects thing to put an airhorn every time Torsten does the dry humour (laughteer). I actually have at home those old school bicycle horns, I should have brought that, too, the Mr Magoo horn.«

RBMA: »The one you put on a bike with the little pump kind of thing? Yeah, they’re good.«

A-Trak: »I bought them at a shop in Japan at 5 in the morning.«

RBMA: »You can take them off as well and you can use it as a foghorn like one of those hunting things?«

A-Trak: »In the alps that’s what you do.«

RBMA: »I guess so. It’s one of those things, who said it the other day, there’s a siren plug-in for Serato now. You must have about 800 million sirens in your collection somewhere.«

A-Trak: »I have a lot of sirens.«

DJ Mehdi: »He’s the siren master.«

A-Trak: »I have a siren playlist. I don’t. It just sounded funny.«

RBMA: »With this whole thing of the styles merging and ‘yadda, yadda, yadda’, discuss the A-Ha routine?«

A-Trak: »The what? With Kanye? He doesn’t do that anymore, but when we were doing the Touch The Sky tour when Late Registration came out, there was a part of the show when Kanye wanted to play other people’s hits to get the crowd riled up. When we started doing it, and we had the full set for the tour, we actually had a clock radio and he was like: “Hey, let me see what’s on the radio,” and then you play a Prince song and Kanye’s like: “Oh my god, I love Prince! Michael Jackson is so good, you like him? I like him too.” And then he always caught people off-guard when the last song was A-Ha - Take On Me and he’d do the Carlton dance and a lot of people thought it was… The crowds would cheer and then certain people would get: “Why’s he playing Take On Me? I think everybody likes that song but…”«

DJ Mehdi: »Not everyone.«

A-Trak: »You don’t like it? Ah. Yeah, but…«

RBMA: »When I went to first year in grammar school I had a moment there.«

A-Trak: »I think in certain respects what Kanye does with music, and it translates with his shows even more, is kind of like a musical education side of it, where he embraces the idea that his music is for everyone. And when he goes and gets artwork by Murakami or a video with Gondry that doesn’t even come out, or I don’t know, to get this or that person to play on his records, part of it is, I think, his side of wanting to strive for what’s best. And part of it is also embracing the idea of being a pop artist and an artist that makes popular art for everyone to appreciate and bringing that to the masses.«

RBMA: »He’s an easy one to hate on if you want to, but nevertheless, when you go to a concert and that tour, which started with the Touch The Sky video and all those installations of all the whorehouses of the world and poor little Kanye lost in sin and temptation. You just got in there and it was like whatever is usually happening, for the next two hours this is Las Vegas and you’re going to be entertained and I’m your Frank Sinatra tonight. That’s a notion someone…«

A-Trak: »At the end of the day, I really feel right now in music, what excites me is as the industry is more and more in shambles, the quality of music is more and more of a driving force. Sure, there’s still some extremely formulaic songs on the radio and what have you. But it’s just for the simple fact that even if you’re an indie artist and you can put something up on iTunes and you can have placement next to a major artist, the side of the industry that’s becoming more democratic because the big companies don’t know what to do anymore. That makes a climate where good music can prevail a lot of times and I think that’s what’s fun with music right now. And Mehdi was talking about how do you not get bored by playing similar sets every night in clubs that look the same and crowds that crowdsurf the same and pictures that go up on the site that look like everything being very similar every night, but I know that for me, there’s something about music right now that’s giving me a spark that I haven’t had in a while and part of that comes from the fact that... I feel like music is stagnant and exciting at the same time. It got so stagnant in the past year, there’s so many DJs that are playing exactly the same selections, and as much as I like using Serato, Serato made it so easy for everyone to have a set that has a little bit of electro a little bit of Baltimore club, a little bit of, you know, all these… You have the obvious selection from each genre and mix it all together in no particular order and get it from the same blogs and you have so much of a situation where the mass of DJs were playing the same stuff that for me suddenly now, this tour is the ultimate example of that, and working with Mehdi is exciting, too, for me it pushes me to figure out a way to stand out from that mass again. It’s not, from a DJs perspective, simply a question of: “Hey, I’m going to play this genre of music because I’m discovering it.” At this point everybody’s discovered it so it’s like: “How can I play it in a way that’s distinctly me?” And that’s a really bold challenge and to find a balance between that challenge and just putting on a good party at the same time, that’s what I’m really enjoying right now, because you can get lost in that and get super crazy and technical and it would be distinctly you, but the crowd would be like: “What?” So to be a good entertainer and to develop your identity in the climate where everyone has access to everything, that’s one of the most exciting things about music right now for me.«

RBMA: »The last album you did was one of the ones where even the most notorious naysayers and naggers were like: “You can do something with those influences and still make it sound now”?«

DJ Mehdi: »That’s the challenge. That’s the challenge for me, which is interesting because I’m not a singer and I’m not a rapper. So I have to find a way to make interesting music instrumental and hip hop at the same time. Like, when after DJ Shadow and stuff and Krush and all those records, hip hop instrumental records weren’t dance music records, so that’s an idea I was looking at but I’ve just started. It wasn’t my first album, it was my first album with this in mind and it was also the first album for our label Ed Banger Records, so a lot of things we were just trying to do stuff and we were still excited about doing anything, but we weren’t ready to have an established thing, you know? It was more playing and finding new ideas and that’s why I still feel like we’ve just started, that’s why I’m touring a lot, that’s why I’m explaining a lot. I never say no to an interview just to explain that this is something we haven’t started but I am starting it for myself and I am still studying how to make instrumental hip hop music that is more danceable and enjoyable. An album you could actually listen to without having to have chorus, verse, chorus, verse, radio singles and I think it also goes. And something we haven’t mentioned still, with the fact that you don’t have to pay for music any more, and the fact that when you do an album and you do these 13 or 14 tracks, you spend a lot of time getting them in the right order, thinking that anybody is going to listen to it in that order when everyone is going to shuffle his iPod or just browse into iTunes and pick the three tracks that they know, people just download and you’ve been thinking about this interlude between two songs that will be just the right link between song 7 and song 9 and you go to Limewire or Soulseek you don’t get the interlude so it fucks up your whole plan. It’s just who knows, how do you listen to an album, which track, whatever, singles, stuff like that, we’re still experimenting with all this stuff and in that regard I had a lot of fun doing this record. I also needed a single or whatever and, etc., etc., but it’s the first time in this industry that I actually did anything that I wanted to because I had no rules. Having no commercial pressure, having no major label pressure and Ed Banger Records being still versioning and still very, very young at the time, I mastered my album almost two years ago, we were just having fun basically and that’s what I love. And I will speak only for Ed Banger Records but inside our own label which is growing up, I’m still fighting for this spirit to prevail and not videos, singles and big hits and stuff. And Pedro, Busy P and So Me, the guy who does all the artwork, we are very much on the same page for this. It’s something that we really want to keep alive, doing 12”s, although nobody really buys 12”s anymore. Just doing fun things just because it’s fun and because it’s stylish and because we like to and without any karmic plan that is very tight. We lose a lot of money.«

A-Trak: »But it’s for the sake of building a brand at the same time. And I think Mehdi was talking about the challenge and the difficulties in making instrumental songs when you come from a hip hop background. When we first met I remember having a long conversation with him about that because I faced the exact same challenges when I started producing more in the past few years. When you come from a hip hop background when you make a track all you really make is a loop and someone helps you turn it into a song and then you might make a few change ups once they put their vocals on it to spruce it up a bit. But most of us who are making the kind of music that we make don’t really have musical training and we have to teach ourselves about song structure. But when you’re at a point in music like it is today, where all these genres are merging and what have you, there’s not even any rules for that so it’s fun. You can make your own rules but it’s challenging because there’s not even that many obvious examples to turn to sometimes to figure out how to make this demo into a song. And then for the next song to be a different approach and not to fall into formulas. But when it works that’s what can make some of these records really unique. So I can really relate to what he was just saying. Listening to guys like Shadow a few years ago but at the same time watching that style of instrumental sample-based hip hop turn into practically hotel music when it got watered down and replicated so many times.«

DJ Mehdi: »But Shadow was the exception.«

A-Trak: »Yeah, Shadow is the only one.«

DJ Mehdi: »Not the only one, but he was...«

A-Trak: »...the best one. No, of course, I’m not saying his music is hotel music but every time that someone else tried to make… When I started working on an album for myself about two years ago, maybe almost three, I don’t even know, for me it was interesting because I had all these different ideas and concepts that I wanted to infuse into my music and on one hand I wanted to make scratch music that was enjoyable as music. I come from a background of turntablism, as you probably know, and there has been some what I would call scratch music, meaning like tracks that are mainly executed by manipulating records as opposed to putting a sound in a drummachine or whatever. But a lot of times over the years the records that were made like that stayed extremely leftfield and extremely… I think people will almost let the producer get away with a song being just not that catchy because it’s interesting technically. But I wanted to make songs that were good songs but that have that technical element because I happen to like the textures that that would bring to production. If I scratch the hi-hat, and there’s a low frequency that comes from my record and the needle picks up on that, and there’s a little bit of static on the high end, that makes a really rich sound. And when every layer of your track is like that I really like the richness of that. So on one hand I wanted to have that element in my production. On the other hand, if you look at it like two, three years ago, I wanted to work with a few rappers that I liked without sticking to whatever those old paradigms we were taking about in terms of who you would expect me to work with. That’s why the first song I put out was with Dipset, just to make a statement, to be like: “You might think I’m A-Trak, the scratch DJ who has a label with Fat Beats. And because of that you might expect me to only work with someone trying to sound like Tribe many, many years later. But I happen to love Dipset and here’s a song with Dipset.” So there was that element to it and then I also wanted to have an element that works very close to what Mehdi was describing in terms of making danceable uptempo instrumentals. And what I ended up with was a bunch of songs that didn’t really gel together and I kind of put the whole project aside. And the party side of it, of the production that I was starting to work on a few years ago, is what I really stuck to, and now when I make a track I don’t need to have a scratch in it. Just because I didn’t really need to have it any more. I don’t have that side of me that’s just like: “There has to be a scratch because that’s not how I’m trying to present myself.“ And the hip hop stuff that I did that was really pure hip hop. Like the song I did with Little Brother, for example, that to me is like a previous chapter. But the party stuff, that’s what’s really interesting to me right now because there’s a ton of ways to get really creative with it.«

RBMA: »So Mehdi, when you said no-one is really listening to albums in order anymore, don’t you think you were on the receiving end of this as well since you put in an effort and created some sort of a classical album approach with interludes and so forth and actual, like: “OK, I don’t care if you download three of them, I’m going to do this the way I want it to be”?«

DJ Mehdi: »Well, that’s an approach I have about life and about art every day. The way you present yourself to ten people or ten million people should be the same. If you are devoted to your art or if you believe, that’s why I love to do in-stores and stuff like that and I also love to play big stage festivals in front of 10 or 15.000 people and just show the same energy because it keeps me rooted well. My love for music and not necessarily my ambition if you will. I’d like to just add one point to what we were saying just before, the difficulty for us producers to have our own music. And two points, we’ve talked about the hip hop producers that were using electronic music and stuff. There was also an influence from the electronic music field, where producers as the Chemical Brothers, as Fatboy Slim as Daft Punk were becoming artists of their own and interpreting and performing their own songs…«

A-Trak: »…and made pop records…«

DJ Mehdi: »…and made pop records. Because without even having to have ‘featurings’ first. And second, I thought at one point that our best producers in the hip hop field, namely Kanye, for example, or Pharrell or Timbaland, or all those guys, even if you say Dr Dre, they had to become rappers to become pop stars. And I’ve never had this in me. Never was in the position where I was like: “Oh, OK, maybe I should sing or start to write rhymes so I can have my own records.” So I had to find another path but I thought the electronic music guys, especially Daft Punk, because I am from Paris and they are my friends, they were very, very, everywhere in Paris when they blew up. And it was very hard, even if you were deeply rooted in the backpack underground hip hop scene, which can be the most closed circuit that you can ever do, they were everywhere. They were just so influential being producers they were using the same records, they were using the same tools, they were using the same samplers but they were artists of their own. They had power in their approach that we didn’t have. For me, I wasn’t going to become a rapper or a singer or whatever like Pharell or whatever, but I was just like: “Hey, there’s something here.” And Fatboy Slim also and the Chemical Brothers.«

A-Trak: »I always thought that Daft Punk had a hip hop or close to hip hop production anyways. Especially, after I discovered some of the samples that they used. Some electronic music is studio wizardry, but Daft Punk’s production a lot of times is just very loop-driven and when you would just hear the sample from Harder, Better...«

RBMA: »…which is?«

A-Trak: »Er, what’s his name… Yeah, that’s it, Edwin Birdsong and you’re like: “Wow, it’s all here except the vocoder.” When you come up in hip hop and you learn about production in the hip hop aesthetic, which is extremely minimal and stripped down, you look at dance music as a kind of a mystery and I still do. Even if everything I’ve produced this year is in the 120 to 130 bpm range and is meant to be played next to an electro song in a club set, I’ll still listen to electro and dance records and there will always be one thing in a track that I hear and I’m like: “I don’t know how to do this.” I’m not saying that towards Goldie because I’ve heard of his temper. He screamed at my previous agent, he made her cry. She is really sweet. I’ll even say, it’s an exception. It’s a crazy exception when a dance producer can make a good hip hop-style beat.«

DJ Mehdi: »Name one.«

A-Trak: »I don’t know. Earlier I was talking about how dance music has this whole mysterious studio wizardy side to it. Guys who make dance tracks get really involved with the fine details of all these different settings of compression and filtering basslines in and out, and doing all these weird sounds that sound like shit that comes out of a cavern, and when you try to bring that to hip hop a lot of the dance guys don’t know how to strip it down enough and it ends up sounding extremely overproduced. Whereas, if you’re a hip hop guy, you know about old school electro, you know about the old drummachines and you know about drum programming. I feel like hip hop drum programming is harder anyways. To program drums at a slower tempo is way harder, just like beat matching is harder at a slower tempo. It’s easy to mix fast records, when you get slower you hear every detail and every subtlety of your programming is super important. So when you bring it up faster it’s just kind of fun. You’re like: “Hey, let me make a danceable track,” and you’re like: “I could dance to this!” Whereas the dance dudes will slow it down and they’ll still be all like with these weird Reason sounds and you’re like: “No, no stop it, stop it, no!” Give me a loop and a good drum program and that’s all you need for a good rap beat. I always like to think about that because the dudes that have the illest drum programming are hip hop dudes.«

DJ Mehdi: »DJ Premier.«

A-Trak: »Premier and Dilla.«

DJ Mehdi: »Who applies to the first category of artist I was referring to. He has the same formula for 15 years and we still love it.«

A-Trak: »He made that blueprint so he can do it for as long as he wants, exactly. But when you think about how many people, how many bedroom producers will just listen to the drum programming of someone like Premier or Jay Dee? I don’t think there’s similar examples for faster music. Maybe just because in that template there’s more room for little mistakes that make the beat good and stuff.«

RBMA: »Somehow I give you that to a certain point but I’m pretty sure that people like Theo or Kerri Chandler would probably slightly disagree.«

A-Trak: »I’m over simplifying a bit to make my point.«

RBMA: »Or are you just basically saying you want to play faster music because it’s more fun to play with at night and you don’t have to stay that sober and you can get away with things a lot easier?«

A-Trak: »It’s more about the way music is right now. I just feel there’s more dance music that I enjoy in 2007.«

RBMA: »Isn’t it kind of interesting how dance music has become so much more popular but dancing as such, not?«

A-Trak: »Yeah, that’s true.«

DJ Mehdi: »That’s because it’s been a while since you’ve seen him dance. You’re going to be surprised.«

A-Trak: »I just think there used to be words that used to be really taboo that aren’t anymore. I catch myself talking about dance music and about pop in this whole lecture, in ways that aren’t ironic and aren’t pejorative at all, but a few years ago, pop was taboo and dance music was taboo. Dance was something that we laughed at, it was fucking I’m A Barbie Girl and those kind of songs, that’s what I used to call dance. If you asked me what category Daft Punk was I’d be like: “Well, it’s just dope.” Now you can say ”dance“, now you can say ”pop“ and it’s not frowned upon.«

DJ Mehdi: »This is your own case, though. I know for sure that coming from Detroit, for example somebody like Dilla, pretty much knew what dance music was.«

A-Trak: »But I don’t know if he’d have used the word ”dance“ is what I’m saying.«

DJ Mehdi: »Techno! Which is even worse, which was even worse in ’96.«

A-Trak: »Eminem once said: “Nobody listens to techno.” Talk about Moby, that’s the best thing. If you think Moby makes techno, then you’re just great. Why isn’t he great anymore? Five bar.«

RBMA: »Shall we have a little moment for Marshall? The interesting notion that underlying in there all the time, is this whole concept of progression. Progression has always been a main theme in dance music no matter if it’s house, techno, drum ‘n’ bass, whatever…«

A-Trak: »I still don’t like drum ‘n’ bass.«

RBMA: »But isn’t drum ‘n’ bass to a degree an example of a genre, which took the whole progression aspect a little bit too serious and therefore confined itself in a lot more ways than was probably healthy? With like all about the next level, the next level. And, yes, between 1990 and let’s say ’95 you saw this progression and from there and you just progress in a lot smaller steps.«

A-Trak: »If anything I would give credit to hip hop producers in that aspect of production in terms of progressing and I’m talking about rap producers. We were talking about how rap started creating electronic sounds. Sometimes I’ll hear some obscure ass Southern tracks with the illest synth sounds and some drum sounds that could be in an LCD beat and I’ll listen to this and remind myself that the guy who produced this is probably 19 and I’ll be like: “Yo, does he even realise how ill he is?” Because a lot of stuff like that in rap that stays interesting, where I feel like the way synthesizers and big drummachine sounds snuck into the soundscape of rap is really dope to me because there was no pretension to it. It wasn’t like: “Man, I’m gonna make this next level shit.” People in rap don’t talk about how great their equipment is and stuff. Not that much. The way that the synthesized sounds snuck into rap hasn’t been as pretentious as what you’re talking about in certain sub genres of rap, in dance music, where producers actively search for that next level.«

DJ Mehdi: »Germany, for example. Germany has the biggest hip hop scene outside of the United States. German hip hop is bigger than French hip hop, no matter what. But I’ve never heard a German hip hop record using a Kraftwerk or a DJ Hell or Gigolo or a minimal techno sound and make it their own and saying: “Hey, I’m German, this is what’s happening in Germany right now, and I’m making German hip hop for some reason.” Maybe you know an example that I don’t know, but for some reason English people have less difficulties merging these sounds and that’s probably why drum ‘n’ bass had such a good ground in England. That didn’t happen in Germany and it certainly didn’t happen in France. And when myself and a few others were trying to do this we were very, very underground and we still are in France. Really, Justice is really the first successful record to come out of this scene and there have been many, many, many tries. A band called TTC, for example, in France was doing this since their first album, which was 1997 or something, and everybody was throwing stones at them and tomatoes and eggs and were like: “What are you doing? This is a hip hop concert why are you playing some techno?” And it was natural for them because they vibed to DJ Funk and to Daft Punk and to Public Enemy and they were like: “This is the music we like, this is how we do it.” But it’s very, very, very marginal, very underground. And TTC and all of other French people that you haven’t heard of, but a lot of people have tried to do this on a more wider scale, quite pop music level. And it wasn’t possible until very, very recently when Ms Dynamite, The Streets, Lily Allen probably, I’m only thinking about recent examples, but whatever, the Bristol scene, Massive Attack, Portishead, all those guys were making interesting music and commercial music at the same time and they were merging genres without even having to explain themselves and that I don’t know if it happened elsewhere. In my experience I don’t remember it happening in Germany or in France and not even in the US.«

RBMA: »Obviously, there’s the little language element as well. For whatever reason, people don’t like to listen to German lyrics outside of the Alsace or wherever, but yes, there…«

DJ Mehdi: »Once again, maybe I don’t know, there were other examples that I don’t think about right now but I think for some reason that the British music scene, maybe the industry, maybe the fact that it has such a long musical history and knowledge, I don’t know, maybe the school, how you are trained to music, maybe the art schools, the music schools, I just don’t know, but all those examples that’s why we love English music, British music.«

A-Trak: »I think the British music industry is exceptional. I think England is an exceptional place to make music and to listen to music. We in America don’t realise that radio in Europe is actually good. There’s some stuff that kicks off in America that could never work in Europe, like Satellite radio. Satellite radio works out here because commercial, actual radio stations are such garbage that there are still people who want to hear some real good radio. But if you go to England and hear good music on the radio and you try to tell someone there’s this other kind of radio that you have to have reception from a satellite and pay a subscription but the music’s really great, they’ll be like: “Why don’t you just turn on your fucking radio.” They don’t realise that out here the channels aren’t the same. I think England is a great ground for good music to work, to reach people.«

RBMA: »You were referring to it earlier when you said France and England are only 20 clicks away from each other, but still it’s a big deal for Parisian artists to go over there. I don’t know how many groups from Marseille have played in London but there might be a similar thing. Obviously, there is the whole language aspect and everyone in the Western world speaks English?«

DJ Mehdi: »There is the language, there is also the whole kind of British music scene being that interesting and has such quick attention. It’s also a little bit, how could I say this – sorry, because English is not my first language and I have to think about it - but it’s also a bit protective. A lot of French artists tried to make it in England or in America, of course, but in England especially. But the English music scene is so vibrant itself it doesn’t really need French artists that do the same thing as the already do. The first reviews I was reading for my album were like: “Yeah, this is music that could only happen in France.” They were like: “What’s the point? In England we are way past that, merging hip hop with electro, we already did this.” And in one way you guys did. They did. So it’s also very hard. From the artist’s point of view, and it’s true for England, it’s even more true for America, you always have more strength when you are innocent about all this. When you don’t know how the English music industry and the English press and radio, how hard they are, and you just don’t want to know. If you are going to struggle to have your music played in England, or release your music in America, you better not know what is really happening because you would just give up before. When you don’t know, when it’s your first or second album, when you’re lucky enough like I was to have the chance to play there and to convince people, even if it’s small scale and gets bigger and bigger and bigger, you’re just lucky.«

RBMA: »But rather than discussing the advantages and disadvantages of being in London I was actually more interested in how to make it in either Montreal or Paris or god knows where, Timbuktu, Frankfurt, or any other city. Are there any lessons that you learnt or things that you would do differently now having committed one or two mistakes before?«

A-Trak: »Just in terms of as an artist breaking through to elsewhere in the world? The internet makes it so much easier. That’s the big part of it. Nowadays, when you do a show in a whole other country most of the people that come to your show will have heard a few of your songs or your mixes or whatever, some sort of musical reference to you which wasn’t the case a few years ago. It’s easier today to break through in other markets, I think. There’s also the side of it that’s like to come back to the realityof the path of someone like Mehdi and myself where I started. I was in hip hop for many years and then went to other genres. When you travel you face different levels of difficult audiences in terms of what they expect you to do. In terms of hip hop specifically, if you’re from North America and you haven’t tried to do a show in Europe and England, for example, you might not realise this, but the further away you go from the birthplace of hip hop, the more people are stubbornly attached to it, the pure hip hop aesthetic. And that’s something that I had to fight. Mehdi was talking about having to fight in terms of the sound of his music, what I had to fight was the people in my audience. Going to England and doing shows where the DJs playing before me, for a while, always did exactly, exactly, exactly the same sets of mid-‘90s rap. It’s something that was mind-boggling and still is to me to talk to certain DJs in Europe, where I would think if you’re far away from where a lot of these American rappers come from, you can pick from different sounds of rap and just appreciate everything. But on the contrary, a lot of the guys that I talked to will still think that Jay Z is commercial and wack and anything on Roc-A-Fella is not good and all the majors are wack and can we please have Leaders Of The New School back and stuff like that. And you’re just like: “Dude, it’s 2007, have you listened to Jay Z’s records?” It’s so crazy to still have these conversations because Jay Z’s like starting to lose it, to go from the progression of at first making commercial records and not everyone listened and noticed at first he was actually a good rapper. Then he made undeniably dope records that everybody really should have realised that he was the best rapper alive. And now he’s sunk to fall off a bit and you talk to these guys that are still like: “Jay Z, he has champagne, what the fuck?” Like, KMD didn’t have champagne.«

RBMA: »Dealing with Taliban is a hard thing, no matter what kind of headwear they have, dealing with hip hop Taliban, it’s the same as going to Afghanistan.«

A-Trak: »And I don’t want to lump all of Europe into that. I’ll do some shows in regional North American markets and face the same thing also, but that’s something I have had to face. It’s just ill when you’re an artist or a musician and in an ideal world you would only have to worry about the music that you make and making something that you’re proud of. But there’s a whole other side of the battle that’s getting it to the right people and having your shows have the vibe that you want it to have. And when you go through certain transitions you always have to go through those phases where you just have to fight for it and people just stubbornly want the old you.«

RBMA: »So essentially at the same point as, let’s say Miles, who heaps of jazz critics argue killed jazz by doing fusion, which I guess for most of our generation is when records got interesting and where gazillions of samples came from, when did turntablism become too much of an olympic sport for you?«

A-Trak: »That’s a good example. Well, for me it really happened in stages. I really don’t want to make it seem like I’ve turned my back on turntablism. A lot of the shows on this tour I’ll still do a solo somewhere towards the end of the night, just to make it the cherry on top of the sundae kind of thing. And even when I don’t literally do a turntablism solo I still cut and stuff like that, so it’s not like I’m not interested in turntablism any more, but it went from getting out of the battle scene, which was a really long time ago for me. People still ask me: “Do you still battle?” The last time I battled was in 2000. That’s a long time ago. So getting out of the battle scene and then discovering DJing in a more general sense, doing shows where I had to do a DJ set and not only be booked because I can scratch well. So getting into DJing and selection and party rocking and crowd-reading side of it. So from there I started feeling like it was too much of an dichotomy where either I was doing turntablism or I was mixing or it was too separate. So from there I wanted to bring back turntablism a bit but as a tool, as a means and not an end, as one of my tools when I’m DJing. And that pretty much close to the mentality where I am at today. Except today, at this point in time, I just feel like I don’t even need to cut at every show that I do. It’s my foundation from ten years ago. I still love to do it, it’s a passion and something that’s part of who I am and the reason why I got into DJing. But the turntablism scene itself, when I think I grew out of it, really turned me off after a while. As I was getting into more production and learning different styles of music and everything, not to come up judgmental or anything, but to go back to watching a battle and see guys do the same stuff that we were all doing a few years earlier, you see that and you go: “Huh, yeah? I wish someone would come and change it up again.” That’s the first stage of getting through it, and then you do shows and there’s guys that look like creeps, dudes that are like the comic book guy in the Simpsons who are in the front row of your show who are like this in front of your decks. You’re just like: ”Is that what the scene has become?“«

RBMA: »Just imagine what Eddie Van Halen must feel like.«

A-Trak: »I don’t know. If anything like that will bring up a certain amount of disgust in me and I got to watch myself when I feel like that because I still like to cut and I still… I don’t want to overlook it, because I still feel it’s something that I can do that some of my DJ peers can’t, but my mentality now is it’s a means to an end it’s not the end itself. For years, when I was heavy into turntablism, ’97 to 2000, 2001, every year there were new styles and new techniques being invented so the technical side of it was so stimulating. Technically, it was mushrooming, it was bubbling to such an extreme level that people were interested in going to see a show that only had turntablism for the whole night just because it was dazzling. It really was. If you saw a show six months ago and then went to see another one and some dude’s invented a whole other style and you were like: “This guy’s dope,” and inevitably there’s only so many things you can invent. Again, we were talking about boundaries earlier, the way turntablism has been for a long time, you take this guy out of here, this has been the limited set up and after a while you’re like: “OK, we’ve got two Technics SL-1200 MK II turntables, a Shure M-44/7 and a choice of maybe three mixers, at some point the DJs ran out of new stuff to do. It’s weird because a lot of my DJ friends kind of gave up on DJing. We were like, me and The Allies, that’s the DJs I was heavily rolling with and touring with in those years, we had this whole network of friends. So when you went to these cities you hung out with this dude who was this dope scratch DJ from that city. And then, when you start going back to that city and your boy is now working at the bank, you don’t want to knock him for getting a real job but at the same time you’re like: “Damn, are you really uninspired and is everyone else going to get uninspired?” That’s just when the technical side of it wasn’t enough to sustain the whole movement anymore. Today, to me it’s a lot more about taking that as a foundation but more than anything being a good DJ or a good producer is much more of a bigger concern.«

RBMA: »I don’t know where Theo is, but you were just mentioning “this guy”, now you were championing an art that was heralding turntables an instrument and ‘yadda, yadda, yadda’, and all of a sudden, there’s this heresy of a computer coming in?«

A-Trak: »You want me to talk about bringing the computer into it? One thing that I find strange with myself when I look at my opinions objectively, I was always the youngest dude in my circles, but I think in certain ways I was always the purist. I was the one that was really like: “You can’t do that”- kind of thing. I remember when Craze first messed around with a prototype of Final Scratch, Craze is one of my DJ partners from Miami, when he first told me about the prototype of Final Scratch that he tried out, for so many reasons I was just like: “That’s wack, why would you do that? There’s no way it’s going to sound the same and are you really going to bring a fucking laptop to the club, are you stupid?” I wasn’t literally insulting him like that but I was just: “Right, you do, you I do me,” kind of thing and we were boys and he was a great DJ and I knew he would take it in his way but I wasn’t interested in it. But the first instance where this whole technology that Serato does now that really captured me, was before Serato came out - a lot of people don’t know this - before Serato came out with their Scratch Live program, Serato is a plug-in company from New Zealand and they made a plug in for ProTools that was called Serato Scratch and you could load an audio file and you had to connect it in this really complicated way with your ProTools rig, but it simply allowed you to scratch with a control record a file that you loaded up on your computer. But you couldn’t apply the full song because you needed way too much RAM but that was the first thing that Serato developed. And that’s something that caught me because there were instances where I wanted to scratch on something that either I didn’t have on vinyl, or didn’t exist on vinyl, or I didn’t want to ruin my vinyl and suddenly I had a new solution for that. Then they started developing the stand alone program and I was doing beta testing for them before it came out, and even when they finished the program, it really took me a while to get used to DJ on it. There was a period of at least six months where I would bring my laptop to a club and play half of the songs off Serato and half the songs off of actual vinyl. That might make me sound like an idiot because you’re like: “Why can’t you just switch?” But this is when Serato first, first, first came out and a lot of people didn’t know about it. It was hard for me. I got past the whole corniness of working with the laptop on stage and that hurdle at that point was getting used to selecting songs off of a laptop. This new generation of DJs never faces that hurdle because they never were trained in doing sets with one crate. But when you’re used to DJing off of vinyl, and anybody that’s been DJing for years knows this, you’re used to having 70 records to choose from for your set or whatever number. Even in the simple, primal way that you actually sift through your records in your crate, and you look at the cover and you know what song it is, you don’t have to read the title, you just know everything that you just passed. Whereas on the laptop you’re like: ”Les Rhytmes Digitales, OK, not that,” it’s just a different process of thinking about how I played my records and I really had to get used to that and eventually I went all the way on Serato. Actually, I want to say something about that, seeing guys like Mehdi, and even when I see Mehdi I can tell he’s from a hip hop background and a vinyl background, but there are guys who are all the way electro, techno DJs on CDJs, this past year I saw some DJs including Mehdi on CDJs freak the CDJs like subvert the music they were playing way more than what people on America have been doing with vinyl and/or Serato and that gave me a new push of inspiration this year. So like, do more to my records when I mix them. Like just a second ago, when I was talking about for years I’ve been wanting to take the concept of turntablism where your record is simply a tool and you make what music you want to make from it, to apply that to a mix was something that was like a mission, the holy grail for me for years. But for some reason every DJ that knew, not every, but most DJs that I knew played on vinyl and Serato still ended up simply mixing song after song. And it’s really, even although I don’t personally use CDJs, it fascinated me when I first saw good DJs on CDJs really mess with like alter pitch and the looping and using them more as tools and stuff. I don’t know, there’s something as much as I love Serato and I am endorsed by them and I use it at all of my shows, I think it makes you lazy in your DJing and that’s the big danger through Serato. It makes you lazy on so many levels. The first one being sorting by bpm’s that makes DJing a whole other experience to be able to sort your songs by bpm. Part of it is cool because it’ll make you try mixes you may not have tried because until you saw the two bpm’s match on your list of songs you might not have thought, ‘Hey, this is mixable with that’, but in reality that’s the romantic way of thinking about it. In reality you make your playlist, sort by bpms and you play it in similar bpms. That makes you lazy. There definitely was a point for me this year where I felt that I was being lazy with the way I played on Serato and wanted to get more creative with it and a large part of that was seeing a few people on CDJs. It’s just ill to me that I come from turntablism, I come from the scene where people do the most with records, in theory. You take these records, and like you were saying earlier, the turntable is a musical instrument. So how come when I see Boys Noize, who is a technical DJ from Germany, your fair land, from a whole other world of DJing, how come when I see him DJ it inspires me more than a fellow turntablist? I saw him play on three CDJs, where every single mix he knew where the breakdown was and what’s the strategic part to bring in the next song from the previous song and again using tools. Seeing that was like, man, like that dude is freaking his records, doing a lot with his records. Stuff like that would make me go back to my Serato set up and be like: “How can I take that approach of DJing, that way of mixing, and apply it to the set up that’s mine?” Which is Serato and then this effects box or whatever else and maybe add a bit of scratching and bringing back records in the way that I know how to do it. That’s how I’m currently coming up with the style of DJing that I really want to make my own which is what I’m really working on now.«

RBMA: »Can you probably, since you received so much kudos for your style of DJing from him, could you elaborate a little bit about what it is you do and your motivations behind it?«

DJ Mehdi: »First, I have to say I had the same shock when I heard that this came out. You have to understand that in America it’s pretty much everywhere, where I know it’s the case in Europe and the standout in Europe is CDJs, vinyl and CDJs is just the standout, everywhere. It’s kind of a problem when a DJ shows up with Serato and you have to deplug, sometimes the mixers are screwed in the tables and the engineer is like, ‘argh,’ just different. So I was obviously using vinyl and bringing some records, and the first time I came on tour in America, first time I played here, for example in Toronto with this guy over there, Mario, I had some records I was playing vinyl and I had one very, very heavy bag of hip hop records and one heavy, heavy, heavy bag of techno and electro records and it was just I couldn’t take it anymore. If you had to do six or seven shows in five days your records, you worry of losing them, breaking them, you just can’t take it anymore. And my other friends had the same shock. For example, my friend Uffie from Ed Bangers, DJ and producer, he was probably the best DJ I knew and he was doing some stuff with the CDs that couldn’t be done with the vinyl and that’s where Pioneer, I think, had the best tool because the other CD turntables were emulating what you could do with the vinyl, but CDJs were just taking it somewhere else. For example, the table is not even turning. At first I was like: “Where are you putting your hands, what are you doing? The table isn’t even turning.” He was like: “Forget the fact it’s not turning. Try it, you will see.” And after this tour I had to go to Australia, which is even worse, and I had to switch and I made the decision to leave my records at home, to take my iPod and my computer and to burn CDs in the plane while going to Australia. I had six or seven shows in Australia and I had no records. I had a CD case, a big pile of blank CDs and I had to burn CDs in the plane if I wanted to do the shows that I had to do. So I had to go to the CDJs and do something different because playing with turntables just wasn’t where it was anymore. So from there being influenced by Boyz Noize and techno DJs, there’s not that many hip hop DJs that I’ve seen using CDJs, I’ve tried to still do the same hip hop routine but add some electro stuff to it. The more and more I was being able with my technique to bridge and to put some hip hop or some ‘70s or ‘80s electro or funk into some electro and reacting more easily to what the audience was trying to hear also. That went in parallel with the fact that Ed Banger was becoming more and more popular and that the audience sometimes don’t really understand that there’s not one Ed Banger sound, but there are more hip hop and Justice are more electro, for example. And I’m not playing always electro records and I have to have more tools in my bag than if I wanted to switch from one style to the other so I found myself very happy with the CDJs and still not understanding what is happening here. But I appreciate the fact that some high end technician, like A-Trak, was able to change his tools in the middle [of his set] like that. If you were a guitar player once again and at on point a person went: “No, no, no guitar is over, you have to learn how to play the violin,” or whatever, you’d be like: “Whatever, my tool is the guitar, I play guitar,” so once again there’s not one way of thinking it’s just do what you have to do.«

RBMA: »Coming from Paris, obviously, there has always been a bit of a connection at least in the latter part of your career with that other dirty word, ”fashion“. So when did fashion become more important than music?«

DJ Mehdi: »You know, I love this subject, especially because I am from the hip hop side of it and at Ed Banger, which is probably the most fashionable label out of Paris right now, I just love the subject because overseas, and when I go to Japan, for example, people receive our music through channels like Colette, which is a very fashion high end store in Paris, and those kind of websites that play some cool music and they synch it to fashion shows and stuff like that, which is not the case at all in Paris. Not at all, at all, at all. People don’t understand how we are disconnected from the fashion world. We are, and me myself, have way more connections with the people that are doing the riots in the streets and in the suburbs in Paris, which are the less fashionable people in the world, than to Karl Lagerfeld or Yves Saint Laurent or Collete stores. I mean, it’s just I encounter this misunderstanding all the time and people think that we are a fashionable label and we are in fashion and that there are connections in between our worlds, which there is not. I mean, some of us like fashion and some of us don’t and that’s pretty much it. It’s not like being form Paris you have to drink wine, eat cheese and like fashion. I personally don’t like fashion. I mean, I understand that people obviously think that because it’s Paris we’re all linked and we live pretty much the same way of life, but it’s just not the case. It’s a big, big misunderstanding.«

RBMA: »I might be over simplifying here but I think one of the weirder notions that people ought to realise when they get to Paris, for example, that it’s definitely dramatic differences in various parts of the city. Like, if you go to the inner bits where the tourists go and the Louvre and all the beautiful restaurants and all those flats that maybe 5% of us in this room will ever be able to afford, Paris inner city life is not exactly cheap and is not exactly made for young, creative people.«

DJ Mehdi: »It’s a big city. It’s pretty much the biggest city in the European Union. Not Paris itself but the whole area is like 11 or 12 million people. And as in every city, as in New York, Chicago or London, for example, it has its scenes. It’s very big, like some bands are very, very, very popular and they make a lot of money and you have never heard of them, and there are very rich and very poor parts of the city. It’s a very big city, but that’s what I like about it. That’s what I love, and that’s definitely something that we are trying to do as to like diversify our music which is not always very readable if I can say, from an overseas point of view. But we definitely represent Paris, it’s our city at Ed Banger and we love this. We are very different, one from the other, but the music just connects.«

RBMA: »On the one hand, I don’t know what the office is these days, but the old office was very much in the centre of the city, but when you look at the way you portray yourselves, let’s say with the videos, you’re championing a lot of the working class culture of the country with the cars and parking lots and stuff and the handshakes and ‘yadda, yadda, yadda’ and what is the significance, and which role is the Banlieue playing, outside of the riots, in French popular culture?«

DJ Mehdi: »It’s very important because first, style, music, a lot of it comes from there because it’s the youth and I think in every Western country the youth plays a very important role in the culture. But as far as I’m concerned, I am from outside of Paris, I am from the Banlieue, which is a suburb and area of Paris, which is the poorest, and it’s just who I am and I was never in some bad trouble. I was never a thug or a drug dealer or whatever it was just how I grew up, going to school, my family, I wouldn’t like my music to be only one message. I wouldn’t like my music to be only dance, for example, or to be only love or to be what did you call, elevator music or whatever, hotel music. I love the fact that music, and it’s even more difficult when you do instrumental music, but we have the videos, when you can have one track that says: “Hey, that’s who I am, I’m from this part of the city and this is what I’m experiencing. And I also like to dance and I also like to have sex with girls and I also like to have whatever.” Cashews. I also like to do all those things at the same time, but as far as I’m concerned that’s how I used image, that’s how I use my videos and that’s just who I am and I’m glad that people not from Paris could understand this. Which makes, once again, the fashion issue even funnier, I love this.«

RBMA: »It’s slightly ironic, yes I know, but I think it’s a lot harder to be loved for the wrong reasons than the right ones, isn’t it? How can you turn that away?«

DJ Mehdi: »That’s the subject of another lecture.«

RBMA: »Coming back to more serious things, because fashion people will be fashion people, they will be here today and somewhere else in two minutes, but your friends that you grew up with will not be able to move that quickly and obviously a year ago when Sarkozy was not the president but was whatever he was at the time like heading the internal department, I think that raised a lot of questions throughout the world or at least in Europe of the role both of a) the youth in modern society and especially immigrant youth. Can you give us a first hand account, as for most people I think up until that point the notion of youth was more a marketing concept or something that happened 800 years ago in 1968 or so, but the actual thing that you can really challenge the state authority was a pretty powerful moment?«

DJ Mehdi: »It’s still not finished actually in France. There is still a lot of problems of what you guys called riots, which is not even what was actually happening or whatever. It was a very serious, serious time where a lot of problems were raised and were dealt with absurdity and sometimes even stupidity. Some young people were burning their own school and their leaders were telling them: “Don’t do this because this school that you are burning is your way out of this.” But they didn’t care because they didn’t want to understand the situation. So it’s a very, very tough subject and it’s not something that I can explain, especially in English, that I can explain easily. So it was an interesting - if I can say that - time and it’s still not finished and the problems that it raised will not be dealt with until 10, 15, 20 years because it’s very, very serious. The generation that suffered those problems right now will not find a solution in two or three years. It’s not going to dissolve like that because Sarkozy is our president or whatever. If Royal would have become our president, it’s something more serious. I would have a very hard, hard time explaining myself about this. It’s a tough subject, and once again English is not my first language so it is very slow and sometimes it touches an absurd point, where something that you can just not understand and you can just not make those rioters understand and they did not want to understand anymore. Some people were like: “Yeah, yeah, they don’t want to understand,” and some people were just like: “This is just stupid.” It’s a very tough subject and it’s still not finished because the problems we were dealing with are still pretty much here and now that Sarkozy became our president it raised another kind of strength. A lot of neighborhoods are still fighting with police at the moment. Still, one or two years after. So it is a situation, definitely. Sorry, if I cannot be more [specific].«

RBMA: »We don’t want to press you on it. Now, you are obviously in Montreal facing slightly different issues. You nevertheless left it as well and went to New York. Why did you feel you had to leave Canada then?«

A-Trak: »Well, on a few levels. It’s still hard for me, I still don’t quite call New York home. I feel like this is something I need to do right now in my life to be there, but there’s a side of it of me leaving Montréal that had to do with needing to be more stimulated. And a side of it that was simply the convenience to being close to certain people and the convenience in terms of, I travel so much and the actual fact that it’s easer to travel in and out of New York compared to Montreal actually was a big factor. But I love Montreal and I find it one of the most culturally rich cities in the world. The more I’ve traveled in the course of my career, the more I’ve realised how unique Montreal is. So it can seem a little strange for me to say that I’ve left Montreal in search of being even more stimulated artistically, but the reality is, and I don’t know how many people in here are actually from Toronto, it’s interesting to talk about this in Canada, but I feel like in Montreal, and in Canada in general, there’s a certain comfort there, that when you’re in an industry that’s very competitive, you can reach a point where it feels like that comfort gives you a plateau. Everything that I love about Canada, socially and politically in terms of how protective we are, I feel like when it comes to situations where people are at the point where they are at the top of their field, the reverse of that comfort and that protection that everyone has in Canada means that it’s hard to really keep going up and up and up. I mean, it’s strange, in America, the risk of getting really low on you life in terms of career is really serious. In America, if you don’t have a good situation in your life you can reach extreme lows, but if you’re a specialist in your field, and you can talk about a heart surgeon or a scratch DJ, you can reach real highs too. So I don’t know if it’s because life is more or less challenging in Montreal or New York. But I think I started feeling like I would come back to Montreal between my travels and kind of come back to seeing my friends and doing the same stuff all the time and go to New York for a weekend and get more done musically and career-wise than I could do in two months in Montreal. And after a while I was like: “I need to live in the city for a bit and make some moves.” The amount of good art and music that you have access to in New York is really a great asset when you’re in the process of developing yourself as an artist. I’ve been doing this for 12 years but I feel like a new artist right now because I have a new label and for the first time I finally have a certain output in my production. So I’m approaching it like a new artist. And when I go to New York I would get stimulated so much that I just wanted to spend time there. And, like I said, there are many people that I work with that are based there and so it’s really in that context. I don’t know how long I’ll be there for and I don’t know if I’ll go somewhere else after. It’s a strange thing because for years and years up until when I actually moved to New York, I always thought I’d be in Montréal my whole life but I’m not. I still love it.«

RBMA: »Did you find that your sense of home has changed dramatically through touring?«

A-Trak: »Yep, yeah, that’s another thing, absolutely. I feel that for certain people to move to another country there’s a challenge there in making a new place your home. I’m used to living out of hotels. I’m used to being in different cities every day for a significant portion of my time. So I do think that the lifestyles that I live as a DJ and have lived for many, many, many years now affects my conception of where home is and maybe makes it easier for me to be a bit of a nomad, even though I never really felt that that was in my personality. I’m kind of a homebody and a simple person in my comforts and habits and few close friends and stuff. I didn’t think I could just be some roaming dude or whatever but the move to New York wasn’t that hard.«

DJ Mehdi: »I still live in Paris and I pretty much don’t want to move, I think. I’m from Paris but I travel all the time so I get to like my city even more when I’m there and the fact is I also have a family. I’m married, I have a child and I’m also very close to my parents and my uncles and cousins and stuff.«

A-Trak: »The scene that you’re part of musically is in Paris with you, that’s what’s different with you. I didn’t have people in Montreal that I work with as much.«

DJ Mehdi: »Well, internet, Blackberry, phone, I thought that you had the internet in Canada?«

A-Trak: »We just got it. Coming from the country of the Minitel!«

DJ Mehdi: »You connect with every country everywhere. Like those guys from Australia, there’s a big, vibrant Australian scene right now and they are the most isolated country in the world, but not if you want to send a text message. If you want to send at 4 o’clock in the morning, you just do. I don’t know how much the scene is important for me as far as my love for Paris is concerned. Me personally, I really want to stay close to my family. That’s why. But I do like Paris and I do like living in Paris and I do like living in France.«

RBMA: »Do we got some questions here? Oh, we tired ’em out. So without wanting to turn you into a circus horse but is there any particular reason you set this up?«

A-Trak: »I don’t know, I think we have to leave pretty soon, we didn’t really plan anything and I just thought we might have certain examples to play and in fact I think our rambling was self-sufficient and didn’t need examples.«

RBMA: »So more elaborate examples will be shown tonight then, I guess. Do you know any stage times?«

A-Trak: »I mean, roughly about 11.30, 12, we might have some surprise guests, I don’t know. I’m still calling friends and possibly planning surprises and stuff. Medhi and I will DJ from about 12, 12.30 to 1.30 or so, Kavinsky’s gonna play some hard techno after. No, he’s not. Kavinsky will play after and then probably all get back together at the end of the night.«

RBMA: »And when will Mannie Fresh be on stage then?«

A-Trak: »We’re not going to have Mannie Fresh tonight.«