It’s primed to be a busy year for A-Trak. Less than halfway through his current North American tour (which makes a stop at New York’s Terminal 5 on Saturday night), the Montreal-born, New York-based DJ still has a lot to look forward to. Next month, he'll open the first official store for his Fool’s Gold record label in Williamsburg. In the fall he'll drop the debut album from Duck Sauce (his side project with Armand Van Helden, which racked up over 50 million YouTube views for their “Barbara Streisand” video), and, maybe then, he'll find some time to work on that solo album.

On trying to meet Barbara Streisand: We’re still working on it, she runs in different circles. It’s only in the last month that we got any type of communication or word from her at all. For months the song was out and there was no way of knowing if she’d heard it. Finally, a few weeks ago I heard from two or three people (all within the span of a week) that she’d heard it. She likes the song, she’s into it and we’d love to meet her.

On explaining the song’s title to Barbara Streisand: I would say: We just thought it sounded cool. The syllables in that part of the song…it sounded cool.

On possible titles for the “Barbara Streisand” sequel: Mel Torme, Engelbert Humperdinck, maybe Lyle Lovett? I’m just thinking of names here. You’ve gotta turn your brain off and see what pops in.

On Duck Sauce’s debut album: We were working on the album before I left to tour. All of the songs are ready now and we’re just fine-tuning the way they’re all going to fit into the album, the listening format and all of that. So far, Duck Sauce has made singles that end up playing on the radio and TV but they’re really formatted like DJ songs—they’re club records with very few changes. For the album we wanted to keep it more interesting and a little weirder so a little bit more work went into the sound.

On Duck Sauce’s trademark sound: There definitely is a Duck Sauce “sound” that we figured out from the beginning and there is such a thing as “sounding like Duck Sauce.” When we make our songs we stick to that but I wouldn’t go as far as saying that there’s a formula, because there are some curveballs and surprises and that’s part of the Duck Sauce sound. When we first came out with the song “Anyway” people said it was a return to disco house, and then we made a song like “Barbara Streisand” that sampled more 80s/British punky stuff. In the same way, the new material for the album has surprises in terms of what we’re sampling and what musical genres we’re playing with. But at the end of the day it’s always about finding the most catchy, quirky loops, and making songs that are often very simple but at the core make people react, crack up, dance, and have a good time.

On naming the album and songs: One of the last missing pieces is the name of the album, but all the songs have great names. It’s one of the things I’m proudest of—the names of the songs. If a song has a great name it kind of has to be good. There are good songs that don’t have great names, but if I look at a tracklisting and the song titles seem inspired, chances are the song has to be very good. We haven’t divulged new titles so I’m going to keep it under wraps, but when we do reveal the tracklisting in the coming months, people are going to be like “yep” I remember when he said that.

On the first official Fool’s Gold store: We’re opening up a shop in New York next month. It’s in Williamsburg and our office will be in the back of it. We’ll be selling all of our records, obviously, but at Fool’s Gold we do a lot of design and work with a lot of brands to make cool products, so pretty much anything we’ve designed or developed with other companies, we’ll be selling. I used to collaborate with clothing lines myself but recently I’ve been bringing all of that to Fool’s Gold, so we’ll be selling everything from letterheads to leather jackets. We’re planning a launch party next month when I get back from touring. Like all Fool's Gold projects, the design was handled in-house, and all artwork on display--custom Fool's Gold wallpaper that is hanging in the store--will be from our art director Dust La Rock. (Preview some of his handiwork on the cover of the all Fool's Gold-issue of Frank151.)

On his upcoming solo album: That’s for next year. It’s something I’ve been flirting with for a little while now, but it’s still in the exploration phase, I haven’t really sat down and dug into it. Once the Duck Sauce album is out then I’ll think about it some more. There’s definitely going to be some hip-hop material on my album, while the Duck Sauce album just has more of a hip-hop spirit and a hip-hop attitude.

On new acquisitions at Fool’s Gold: We just signed Danny Brown, a rapper from Detroit who’s really amazing and we have two other signings that are about to be wrapped up—they’re bands that can’t even really fit into genres.

Photo Credit: Terry Richardson