DJ A-Trak (28) won the DMCs World DJ Championship at the age of 15 and over his career has won several other high-profile DJ battle championships. He has toured and performed with Kanye West, has remixed and worked with top dance music acts and bands such as Boys Noize, Laidback Luke and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and party rocking demolition man.
You come from a turntablist and hip-hop DJing background but over the past decade you've moved into the dance music scene working with and remixing the likes of Boys Noize and Laidback Luke. Can you explain how that transition happened?
Well a lot of it just happened progressively. I guess there was a point in 2005 and 2006 where we started experimenting with our sets, we started mixing up styles more. As a DJ you always have to keep in mind the audience and we were paying attention to what they were interested in. So we just started to think, "Whats going to get the party going?" and naturally started to play a more varied set with faster tempos.
When you're playing those banging club sets, do you incorporate the things you learnt as a scratch and battle DJ?
Most definitely. Although I play my sets quite differently I bring in scratching as well as doing tricks and so on. But I'm also definitely conscious of not over doing it. Its more to colour the set.
As a Red Bull Thre3Style judge, what things were you looking out for when judging a participants set?
For me personally, as a judge, I ended up being drawn to the guys who came from a DMC battle background because they had that battle attitude and it helped switch on their creativity more. I guess they're used to handling the pressure.
You've been very much a part of the DJing battle circuit and scene over the years. What would you say differentiates Red Bull Thre3Style from the scratch and battle scene that you've known over the years?
Well its a totally different approach because its all about rocking the party. That actually makes it really tough for the participants. So although they don't have to do amazing things technically, entertaining an audience in fifteen minutes is tough, especially when there are so many other DJs who also only have fifteen minutes.
Is that then the challenge for the participants?
Yeah I guess. It can actually be difficult for the crowd as well, to watch so many sets like that back to back. So the challenge is the time factor and keeping the energy high but also understanding the challenge for the audience. In a lot of the regional finals there are often certain DJs who are crowd favourites, and that helps them, but that wont be the case for the international finals, and the finalists going to Paris are all going to be very good so its going to be interesting to see who wins.
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