By Emily Kohlhas  |  Send to Friend

On the Asia tour:
It was really fun.  I was on the road for almost a month and a half --  five weeks or so.  Asia was just two or two and half weeks of it, but it was right in the middle and the craziest part of the tour.  We started in Europe, went to Asia and went really deep in -- nine cities all over a bunch of countries.  Then we went to Europe and South America and stuff, but the Asian tour was fun.  I’d been to at least half of those cities before just over the years, sometimes for a Kanye show or a show I might have done seven years ago.  But even some of the cities where I’ve been before, now it’s in a new context, because there’s so much of a global scene for music.  The last two years have had a whole new level of connection around the world where I can go play a party in any city and there’s gonna be kids who know the same records.  I’ve been DJing for a long time and it wasn’t always like that.  A lot of times when you went far you’d have to prepare.  What do they like in San Francisco? What do they like in Norway?  Now you just go everywhere and everyone just watches the same YouTube videos and is on the same MySpace pages.

It’s still cool.  This electro-thing is still newer in Asia, so people are up on it and they like the music that I make, my label, my friends and peers, and they’re really excited to get to see it live.  Those cities are incredible.  The jump from Manila to Bangkok to Osaka to Beijing.  In each one there’s so much to see.  I’m there for a day or two and it’s easy to stay in the hotel all day because my workload is a bottomless pit, as much with the music that I make as for the administrative, running my label and everything.  I could sit for a week and do nothing else and still not finish what I have to do.  So I could very well stay in my hotel room all day and rest 'cause really I didn’t sleep the night before and get some work done, and I still try to do that reasonably, but during that tour because I was in such interesting cities it was like, “OK I’ve got a day off - here’s a window of two hours when I can go out and see stuff and take pictures and experience things.” What can I do?

What's the best city to be tourist in?
Manila was really cool.  I’m just thinking about this specific tour, of those cities I went to in Asia.  Manila was really interesting just because it’s so different.  A lot of the cities I went to on the Asia tour still have a significant western influence, and as soon as I landed in Manila they drove me to the hotel and people were driving on the wrong side of the street like it’s nothing.  Everything is a little bit more wild -- it makes your blood boil – it’s like wow this place is kinda crazy.  Later in the tour I went to South America, to Buenos Aires, and it’s now one of my favorite cities.

Would you ever contribute to a travel guide?
I’m really considering it!  I started filming these hotel reviews as a semi-joke --  I just filmed myself doing travel guides to put on my blog – and now I’m starting to get approached for real by these websites like, “hey, would you like to contribute to our travel site?”  The hotels themselves write to me and they say, “thank you for the review!  Can we put it on our Facebook page?”  I appreciate a good hotel, so I’m happy to do it.

What’s the best thing about having Fools Gold?
Overall the most exciting thing is to see how fast it’s grown and how much we’ve been able to lock in for the community of DJs worldwide.  Not even just the DJs, but there’s a whole cultural thing with the fan base - doing Fools Gold tours and seeing the kids come out, putting out some great records.  There’s a whole ideology behind it, me being a DJ myself, and the same for my partner, Nick Catchdubs.  It’s an artist run label.  We really want to foster a community.  On a business standpoint, the contracts representing an artist are very friendly.  It’s nothing I wouldn’t sign myself.  Sometimes my lawyer will be like, “are you sure this is all you want?”  It’s a climate that I really like though because when we do shows and all the DJs come together I don’t feel like I’m their boss - like, “come on kids.”  It’s just like I’m with my friends and DJs that I respect and enjoy.  I happen to be in a position where I have the voice to put their music out, but that camaraderie is really cool.  To have some of our records really connect – the Kid Cudi record was huge, Kid Sister “Pro Nails,” of course, Treasure Fingers “Cross the Dance Floor,” I think those are singles that I think really had an impact.

What can we expect from Duck Sauce?
It’s a fun project ‘cause it was really easy to make the songs.  When I produce by myself I work pretty slowly and go in baby steps and play with every sound and make everything like, “do I want this snare drum, that snare drum...maybe I don’t want a snare drum,” that’s how I work.  But when I sat down with Armand, we made each song in an afternoon and the whole thing kind of fell in our lap.  He approached me like, “hey I wanna make a record with you,” and I don’t think I’ve ever made a record that’s been so well received by such a wide range of DJs.  I’ve made records that really connected with this niche or that niche or this group or whatever.  A lot of what I do is working with nuance and subtleties and attention to detail, so fellow producers will be like, “that’s really cool how you tweaked the sound.”  But the Duck Sauce records - the range of DJs that I’ve played it to who right away are like, “it’s about time someone brought this sound back” - it’s a great feeling.  I’m just excited to have these songs, to play them to people and be like, “hey, Armand and I made this and we’re about to put it out, and it’s coming out on Fools Gold.”  I think the anticipation is really fun.

Check out our Short List with A-Trak on the music blog here.

Illustration by Rich Lippold.