April 9^th and 10^th marked the seventh birthday of Institubes, the electronic record label, home to artists Bobmo, Das Glow, Midnight Juggernauts, Para One, Orgasmic, Teki Tek, Surkin, and more. This year the label celebrated by hosting a tremendous music festival at Paris’s club l’Enfer, the massive underground lair that sees many a music event and party (although I imagine is not always easy to fill, at least not like Institubes did this weekend). The label was, however, looking to stay close to their interests and priorities: the music… A festival that was 100% independent, without any major sponsors, without printed flyers lining the streets, smack dab in the middle of Paris. And they did just that. The dual stages in the two connecting rooms of club l’Enfer were non-stop bumping while the various artists mixed, spun, played, and sang to a more than elated crowd of young and old house, electronic, hip hop fans.

Day 1 had a slow but solid start, making way for a progressive upsurge of excitement as the different acts took to the stages. The lineup included A-Trak, Sinden, Surkin, Bart B More, Bobmo, Chateau Marmont, Sound Pellegrino Thermal Team, and Douster. Below l’Enfer’s huge disco ball the crowd came a-running when the four piece group, Chateau Marmont, kicked off the night on the second stage. The boys didn’t keep the crowd for long however once Douster started mixing in the main room. Institubes flags waved behind him as he riled up the crowd with his hip hop/house/zouk/Latina tracks, including his Lion King inspired, “King of Africa” and a body shaking remix of Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up.” Following Douster was Bart B More’s long set of every house fan’s dream, but nothing pleased the crowd more than when 3:30 am rolled around and Teki Tek got on the mike and gave A-Trak a more than colossal introduction. Fool’s Gold (A-Trak’s label) t-shirts went a-flying, chanting ensued, and the party truly began as A-Trak took his spot in the DJ booth, molding, moving, and stirring the ecstatic fans. Remixes of MSTRKRFT’s “Bounce,” Daft Punk’s “Robot Rock,” and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs “Heads Will Roll,” weaved in and out of the speakers. A-Trak closed his set with a remix of LCD Soundsystem’s “Drunk Girls,” then respectfully lounged by the booth while Sound Pellegrino Thermal Team finished up the soirée (they, on the other hand, were jumping, climbing, and dancing throughout the entirety of their party-harder mixes). Before A-Trak booked it out of the club, I got a chance to sit down with him and chat. Check out the interview below.

Day 2’s lineup included Boys Noize, Para One, Modeselektor, Tacteel, Das Glow, Jean Nipon, Crystal, Stunt DJs and Clap Mike. The second you walked into l’Enfer you could feel the hype that was lacking the previous night. Even at an early hour the club felt twice as packed. Boys Noize t-shirts were everywhere you turned, rowdiness was by no means lacking, fans were jumping over the rails of the main stage in attempt to hang alongside the artists, even the countless bouncers that lined the floors seemed nervous with excitement and on their toes. The energy kept on rising as Das Glow rocked out to his own tunes. Para One got a more than rapturous reception from the crowd. And of course, when young, German, electronic music producer and DJ, Boys Noize (Alexander Ridha) took the stage, chaos ensued. No one looked more elated, however, than Boys Noize himself. It’s hard to pinpoint which of Boys Noize’s tracks got the best response, but “Kontact Me” and Erol Alkan collaboration, “Lemonade,” were certainly close to glass shattering.

Overall, a successful festival for the kids of Institubes, a label that continues to nurture the dynamic and diverse electro and house music scene. I expect many a good thing for their future.

Alain Macklovitch, also known as A-Trak, is the 28 year old, Montreal-born DJ and producer. At the age of 15 he won the DMCs World DJ Championship and has continued to gather many a title throughout his career, often named one of the most successful DJs of his time. In 2004, A-Trak began touring with Kanye West as his personal DJ and has worked closely with him on various projects and events. In 2007 A-Trak collaborated with Nick Catchdubs to found Fool’s Gold record label, now home to a variety of artists including Kid Sister, Treasure Fingers, LA Riots, Crookers, Bag Raiders, Kavinsky, Kid Cudi, Laidback Luke, The Count & Sinden, and more. Recently A-Trak collaborated with Travis Barker in honor of DJ AM, and teamed up with DJ Armand Van Helden under the name Duck Sauce on a couple tracks.

A-Trak is successful, creative, more than good at what he does… and damn nice.

Hi, my name is Juliette, I’m from New York City.

I live there.

Miss it?

Ill be back Sunday, it’s a really quick trip. Tomorrow I’ll be going to Rouen, about an hour away. This trip is literally three cities in France in three days.

Fast! Do you like these sort of tours?

No it kills me. (Laughs) I don’t know when I’m going to get to sleep.

But overall you still enjoy touring?

Yeah the parts that are particularly grueling I could do without, the exhaustion. But I love what I do. I’m lucky to do what I love for a living. I’m lucky to live off of my passion and be able to travel the world and see all these amazing cities and play music I really like.

You’ve been doing this for so long, how has it changed?

For me I think the biggest change over the years is that nowadays you can find similar scenes around the world. I remember a time where I would fly really far away I would have to figure out what kind of music they wanted to hear. Whereas nowadays everyone is on the same blogs listening to the same music… Not as much of a, What do these guys want? which is what you get when you are really far. But it’s cool. The upside for me is to be able to push certain records, Fool’s Gold, my label, the records I make, the records I’m behind, the records I’m associated with. It’s great to travel the world and see people who listen to it everywhere. That’s the upside of the homogenization of music.

I can imagine it’s also a challenge since the music scene has become so similar in all these different places.

Yeah, it’s a lot more of a game of nuances. Another big difference over the years is that a lot of DJs have the same music. You know, it used to be a question of finding records on vinyl and you’d track down this or that record that no one else had, but now most DJs have the same access to the same music, so there is even more work required from the DJ if you want to stand out, because you probably have 90 percent of the same records as the next guy.

You do still manage to stand out…

Hopefully. I mean I’m lucky to have a good relationship with a couple of DJs. Definitely every set I do there is a couple records I play that people don’t have. I’m a DJ who has an agenda, I don’t just bend and play what the crowd thinks they wants to here, I’d rather take them over to my side and say like, hey this is what I think you guys would like, which is much more of an active relationship with the crowd. It’s like taking a stance and saying this is my platform these are the records I like.

And the label, Fool’s Gold? How are things going?

To me there’s always work whether it be with my DJing and my label, I’m always thinking first about what’s not quite there yet, what do we still need to push. But at the same time for the most part I’m very pleased.

Any projects in store that you are particularly excited about?

A couple things right now that are exciting on my end. I started a collaboration with Travis Barker, doing shows with him. It’s fun for me to build a new show, to not have a comfort zone, to have to do something brand new from scratch, start to finish, and to work with this particularly gifted musician, that’s cool too. So yeah, there’s the Travis stuff, then Duck Sauce – there are some new tracks that I cant wait to put out. And I’m working on a couple of mixes, remixes, CDs, and starting to think about my own album a little bit, all of that together with the touring schedule…

Most important question of the night, I noticed you were texting quite a bit before your set… So who was it? Kid Sister or Kanye?

(Laughs) Neither. Most of the time I’m just checking twitter. And my mom texted me once.

To wish you luck?

Yeah!

Thanks, A Trak.

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