Another Way Of Life: Sun artist A-Trak has been making quite the name for himself from a very early age. Unlike most boys at the age of 13, Alain Macklovitch was in his parent’s Montréal basement mastering the art of scratching and mixing on the turntables he bought with his Bar Mitzvah money. Hard work would soon pay off when he won the DMC World DJ Championship in 1997 at the tender age of 15 – making him the youngest DJ ever to do so. After winning the “World Series” of DJing, he was asked to join the prestigious, but now defunct Invisibl Skratch Piklz, whose members included heavyweights like as Mixmaster Mike and DJ Q-Bert. By the time Alain retired from the competitive DJ scene at 18, he had five world championships under his belt and was ready to expand his musical range.
In 2004, Kanye West recruited Alain as his personal tour DJ. Working with Kanye very closely, Alain performed at MTV specials, the Grammy Awards, multiple MTV Video Music Awards, and worldwide stadium shows. Alain also recorded scratches on Kanye West’s second and third studio albums Late Registration in 2005 and Graduation in 2007. During these years, Alain also released his acclaimed autobiographical DVD in 2006 called Sunglasses Is A Must.
With his career moving with great momentum, another project began to take shape. “I had an indie hip-hop label with my brother Dave called Audio Research. Then my brother started Chromeo and starting touring, and I got the Kanye gig. We were just doing a lot of stuff and not really putting out records. Around 2005 or so, the music that I was playing as a DJ was gravitating more toward this whole movement in the Northeast in the States, where a bunch of the DJs were playing a mishmash of different genres–everything that was club-friendly and uptempo.” Utilizing the idea of genre bending, Alain began to delve further into the project. “…I met Nick Catchdubs and we forged this friendship that was based around sharing music and talking about music. We had a lot of questions, like, ‘Why is this guy working with this producer? He should work with this other guy!’ and ‘What if this record had artwork by this guy?’ What ended up being the catalyst was when I started making music with Kid Sister, which was also when I started experimenting with my own production. Pretty quickly we had this single of hers that was ready to be pressed up. But we didn’t know which label to release it on. That’s when we decided to start this label together.”
That label is of course, Fool’s Gold Records. Bridging the hip-hop and dance music worlds together, the imprint has introduced us to artists like Kid Sister, Kid Cudi and A-Trak’s side project with Armand Van Helden, Duck Sauce. Called an “indie innovator” by Billboard and a “tastemaker label by the New York Times, Fool’s Gold Records is one of the most respected imprints in dance music today. We are so excited to have A-Trak joining us for this year’s AWOL Sun in Cabo San Lucas. You can witness the master turntablist at work this October 10-13th, but there are only a few spots left, so book your room today!
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