A-Trak talks tech, Twitter and turntablism in Austin

Hitting up an A-Trak gig in 2011 is a very different experience from when the DJ was starting out back in 1997. In the late ‘90s, DJing and turntablism made up a huge scene in the music world, but the general public was still familiar with DJs as the friendly morning voices telling them about the weather, and cranking out pop and rock hits between commercials. If you were at a DJ gig, it was in a club and you were on the floor, dancing wildly and lighting up when a piece of your favorite song leapt out at your ears from the mix, or raving with glowsticks under the influence of cosmetics. If you were really into the scene, you were nodding your head as other DJs scratched sick patterns into vinyl grooves. The prevailing venue for DJ gigs, though, was the nightclub, and no matter how technically talented a DJ was, he or she was still mostly considered a background performer.

Flash forward to April 20, 2011, in a new club in downtown Austin called Venue 222. A bouncer collects tickets from fans at the door, who are lined up to see one of their favorite artists perform. There are no drums onstage, though, and no guitars, basses, or even mic stands. When I walk in at 10 p.m., there’s just a folding table set up with two turntables side-by-side on top, and two guys with huge earphones slid around their necks, nodding their heads. This is the modern-day DJ gig:  it’s like any other rock concert, which makes for a very diverse crowd.

After warming up with opening sets by the Gaslamp Killer and Kid Sister, the audience was antsy for A-Trak’s arrival. As the stage crew cleared the folding table from the front of the stage, a giant structure covered by a plastic grey sheet became the focus. After setting up behind the sheet, the crew finally pulled it off to reveal a giant, abstract “A” with LED lights inset. It was very 70s and very, very cool. When A-Trak entered the scene, the crowd went crazy and the diversity really revealed itself. During his set, half of the crowd was club dancing (and one guy had LED gloves on, passionately raving by himself as onlookers smiled), while the rest held up their phones and pocket cameras, recording songs and snapping photos of A-Trak, just like you’d see at a rock show.

A-Trak, born Alain Macklovitch, is totally savvy to the changing world of DJing, since he’s grown alongside it through his young adult years. He got into DJing when he realized he had a knack for it.

“I found I had this sort of natural disposition for it, and then that turned into a really serious hobby, where I would come home everyday after school and practice for many hours,” A-Trak says. “It was a lot of dedication — a little obsessive.”

The obsession paid off. At the tender age of 15, A-Trak won the DMCs World Championship, the biggest DJing competition at the time. And no wonder — he was incredible. This win kick-started his career.

“Suddenly I was getting a whole lot of press, all types of magazines, and getting booked internationally from clubs to festivals to really experimental stuff, collaborating with all different musicians — it opened a lot of doors,” A-Trak says.

A-Trak has since expanded his resume; he’s sort of the Jack White of the dance and hip-hop world, producing albums for Kanye West, breaking Kid Cudi on his music label, Fool’s Gold, working with huge fashion labels like Nike and Zoo York, and remixing and DJing with an expanding list of genres. “That’s how my mind needs to work,” he says. “I need to work on many things at the same time.”

Though DJing has become far more widespread over the years, A-Trak says there are definitely still a few misconceptions about it. “Every era has its own misconceptions. I think now, the big catchphrase everybody likes to say is, ‘DJs are like rockstars!’ I don’t even know what that means. I think if anything, it points to the idea that the biggest thing about DJing now might be the cult of personality. Maybe people don’t know so much about the craft, you know what I mean? A lot of people just know, ‘We’re gonna go to a show and watch this guy play songs we like, and he’s gonna throw his hands in the air.’ That’s one aspect of DJing, but there’s definitely a craft.”

A-Trak is a master of the craft. In his later teen years, he began to develop a notation system for scratching. “It looks more like a seismograph than anything, like a lie detector almost. The basic idea is just to draw a graph of the record movement. It’s very scientific.”

Despite his technical proficiency, A-Trak himself admits that one of his biggest hits, “Barbara Streisand,” which he did with his partner Armand Van Helden in his side project Duck Sauce, was far more basic. “The music is deceptively simple. Super simple. It’s more about the emotion and the reaction that it brings out. I think a lot of it even has to do with our personalities and how we gel with our sort of weirdo sense of humor. What we actually do in the studio, is kindergarten.”

Still, he says, there is a craft to the simplicity here, too. “The production is super simple, but I think the big key to the success of Duck Sauce is the fact that we get it to sound really good. For songs to become universal, of the level that ‘Barbara Streisand’ got, they have to be at a level of sonics that just please people at an instinctive level, where you don’t really think about, ‘Oh yeah, that really sounds good!’ It has to work everywhere. If a car’s passing by and the song’s playing on the radio, you wanna be able to recognize it.”

With technical talent and a knack for great production, A-Trak could really consider himself set. But on top of this, he’s a savvy performer who knows how to use modern tools to communicate and brand himself.

“The relationship between the artist and fans is really different,” he says. “It’s a process where you have to be more directly involved with your fan base, ‘cause they have to go buy tickets.” So he’s utilized social media sites like MySpace and Twitter to reach out directly.

“I think in the beginning I was a little hesitant to get on, because on the more personal life level, it’s like I don’t wanna meet people online, that’s weird. You know? But I kinda had to do it because of my career, and once I got on, my impression is — it’s just how things are.”

A-Trak has become the king of Twitter, sending short notes to fans directly as he tours around the country. “I like Twitter because I like the immediacy of it. I’m always on the move, and anytime I hop in a cab and for ten minutes I’m just kinda sitting in the back seat, with no one to talk to, but not enough time to really do anything constructive — I just start tweeting. There are a lot of moments like that, with just the way my life is. There’s a lot of movement, a lot of in-between things I have to do, and it’s fun to write my thoughts. I’m a fan of the brain fart, something that pops in your head and you say it.”

Not only does A-Trak utilize social media to connect to fans, but he’s an expert at working off of the crowd in live performances. He knows just when to flash a grin, when to climb up on top of his table, when to step back and survey, and when to talk to his fans to pump them up. There is also still a bit of the brazen 15-year-old DMC Champ in A-Trak, choosing to use his samples to communicate through his music. More than anything, these days he lives up to his promise in the Duck Sauce hit “aNYway:” “I can do it any way that you want it.”