Watch the video interview (no embed? What the deal BBC?) here.

Watch my guided tour of Steve Angello and Sebastian Ingrosso’s villa in Ibiza! Check this, the previous episode of A-Trak TV (starring Busy P), and all future installments here.

Dudes! You’ve known since this post that I was about to come out with a record for all your jogging needs. This is essentially my first record — can you feel the excitement in my blogging style today? Anyway it’s out now and you can cop it on iTunes. It’s available all over the world but our North American friends also get a 5 minute “behind the scenes” style video shot in my studio living room.

I just landed in Barcelona for the famous Sonar festival. We were billed as “DJ Mehdi vs A-Trak feat Kid Sister”. I love it because it’s a math formula: “vs” is like “x” and “feat” is like “+”. But wait, there’s an issue with the priorities! Is it (DJ Mehdi x A-Trak) + Kid Sister, or DJ Mehdi x (A-Trak + Kid Sister) ? In other words, the DJs and the MC, or Europe meets America? I think I might ask the organizers. Strictly speaking, the way they wrote it without parentheses it should mean the first one. But Kid Sis actually canceled last week so they might not be receptive to my little question.

Time for one of my long-winded tour novelas. I recently wrapped up a European tour that spanned the whole month of May, one which I arbitrarily named the Upper Crust Tour at the last minute, in honor of that beloved chain of sandwich shops found in almost all train stations. After doing a whole bunch of tours with other people — the Fool’s Gold fam, Mehdi, Kanye, etc — I felt like going off to clubland (Europe) and back to raw DJing practically every night for 4 weeks. Of course I wasn’t literally by myself the whole month. In most cities I was sharing bills with friends from either continent. But it did feel like a pilgrimage to the land of the DJ, and on off-days I would often link up with other producers and work on music. I loved it. I started a Flickr page towards the beginning of my trip so you can catch my full set of pics here. Let’s dive into it.

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I can finally announce my record! The damn thing comes out in 2 weeks. Sooooo Nike does this series where they ask producers to make a continuous 45 minute piece of original music meant for people to jog to. I made one and it comes out June 24th exclusively on iTunes. The only catch is I don’t run. In fact I said it in the official press release:

“I don’t really run. Yet when Nike asked me to do this track I was smitten. There was a musical challenge there, and I got excited. I’ve been producing mostly uptempo electro tracks as of late, but my background is hip-hop and I think you can hear it in my choice of sounds. I wanted this record to showcase my current style, but I also didn’t want to stray away from hip-hop completely. That’s why you find guest rap verses in the mix, plenty of chopped & screwed vocals, and a hefty dose of drums breaks that are surely more block party than Ibiza.” — me

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