Around the World Pt.28
As posted on the fab Fader blog.
When we last spoke I was halfway through my European festival tour, reaching grueling levels of travel erosion, feeling the wear-and-tear of sleep deprivation and nonsensical flight routings. I had two days “off” in London, which only meant that I didn’t need to go to an airport during those days, not that I was actually resting. My next show was in Norway for the OsloLive festival, in a park inside the city. That show was a lot less of a mission than the others, in the sense that we didn’t have to drive out into the wilderness and my set was at a civilized hour. Even within city confines, Nordic crowds like to get down and scream in unison. The Scissor Sisters played right after me and I’m currently obsessed with their album. I also met Tony Senghore, whose tracks I’ve been spinning in my sets for the last year or so. He’s Swedish and he was talking to me about various Swedish producers who live in isolated towns up North, far from everything. Reminded me of this show that I did many years ago on a boat in the land of the Svensk. But I digress.
I went to Belgium for the Dour festival. My brother was also doing the European festival run with Chromeo and this was the first time we were on the same bill. I played an hour after them, so we were each other’s cheerleaders. The next day was the last hurrah of the tour: 2 festivals in 2 countries in one day. I woke up in Belgium and a driver took me to the Netherlands for Extrema festival. It was meant to be a 2 hour drive and we planned it out so that I’d get there an hour and a half before my set. Except we didn’t factor in that this driver would be a nincompoop who got us lost. Once we approached the town of the festival, this dude circled around for 2 hours, nervously chain-smoking cigarettes while his flip-flop laden feet fiddled with the pedals, as he called the festival organizers claiming that his GPS was indicating roads that had been changed. I missed the first half hour of my set, and we couldn’t push it back because I still needed to go to Germany after. That’s what happens when you put your fate in the hands (and feet) of someone with flip-flops. But frankly the show wasn’t my steez so I didn’t mind cutting my set short. Too many muscles in attendance. Once that was done, another driver — this time with real shoes — took us to Dusseldorf so that we could fly to Berlin, to then be driven to the town of Dessau for the much fabled Melt festival. This site was something to behold. It’s in the middle of a gigantic industrial structure that looks like something out of Terminator with enormous metallic cranes, and the sky was filled with light beams. It’s nuts. The music programming is top notch.This time the Montreal takeover of the stage was even deeper: Tiga, then Chromeo, then me. During Chromeo’s set I went up on stage and played the cowbell at the end of “Night By Night”. I loved DJing there, and it’s especially gratifying to end a tour on a high note like that.
As you can imagine that ended pretty late. Late enough to get breakfast at the hotel before going to sleep. Too late to get to Berlin in time to catch a flight home, unless I wanted to sacrifice sleep, which I didn’t. So I took a day off in Berlin, this time a real day off, and finally flew back to New York.
The next weekend I went to sunny southern California for Audiotistic, which is basically a big rave that also books a few hip hop acts. They used to have it every year in the early 2000′s and I played a bunch of times back then, and last year they brought it back. It’s in San Bernardino, a town made famous by Frank Zappa. A bunch of my Fool’s Gold buddies also played so it was cool to rekindle after all this time away in the Old Continent. Lately it seems like every event tries to outdo the competition with their stage production. It’s like a nuclear arms race. So here I played in the middle of a humungous video wall. A lot of these Californian concert-raves also provide dancers in the strangest costumes. My stage had these girls wearing gas masks and literally juggling fire. What ever happened to pom-pons?
On the following afternoon I played an unannounced set at my favorite party in America, the Do Over. After all thumping sledgehammer music it’s always a pleasure to show up there and play funk, disco, boogie, classic hip hop and even a touch of yacht rock on a sunny LA terrace. We dubbed it the Fool Over since I was joined by my consigliere Nick Catchdubs and Craze. And later that night I played yet another surprise (short) set at Samantha Ronson’s little “anything goes” party at Dreis. While walking out I was accosted by a TMZ videographer but I told him I didn’t know who A-Trak was, and then a paparazzo came up and asked for a picture with me, not for the tabloids but for himself “because I’m a fan”, he said. The streets of Hollywood were getting too weird for me so I retreated to my batcave and crawled into bed.
Photos by Robin Laananen, Al Myers, Jen Flores & misc.
19 Responses to “Around the World Pt.28”
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- There's Iberia, and there's Siberia.
A-Trizzy I was seriously pissed of your performance at Melt! Festival like a whole lot of other fans too. Okay I had my fun but what happened to your video performance with vsl? Huge LCD Projectors to each side of the stage and no Video SL. Maaan I was pissed! The acts before Chromeo had some nice stuff running on these. Second, I and a lot of other folks were not so happy of your whole set. (Okay the hipster did but they always do.) What happened to your creative track selection? Just a handful of new tracks (Yes thank you for playing Congorocks Remix of One) and a lot of old stuff. Don’t get me wrong there’s nothing bad about some older tracks but Pon de Floor?! C’Mon! You didn’t really thought about what other guys might play at the festival so almost all tracks you played someone already had played at the festival. Not so cool…
No doubt your intro and the scratching was dope as usually but overall your set was not that creative compared to what you normally do.
Next time hopefully better. ;D
he’s only human i guess.
@Flo he was probably just hungover and tired. Trizzys allowed to party too
I was just saying his set was average not complete bulls$%&.
But I was really pissed because of no video-scratchlive and still no explanation why from the man himself.
BTW: Dousters Set was sick! Check out this dude if you don’t know him. He made “King of Africa” and a lot of other cool tunes.
Hey Flo.
First of all about the visuals, this is something I didn’t address in my blog but I may as well respond since you brought it up. I decided to put them on hold for now. If you read the previous Around The World post where I was first describing them, you probably saw how they were all finished at the very last second. Well, I’m a perfectionist and I felt like the show wasn’t quite ready. I never got a chance to perfect it. So I’d rather not do something I don’t feel 100% about. Sorry if you came expecting something different.
As for the track selection… honestly when you play a big, varied festival like this, it’s hard to please every single person. Seemed to me like the crowd was live. I still think i was the only DJ cutting and rocking doubles all night at that festival. I change my set every night, I never repeat the same thing, so the next time you see me you’ll surely see something different. And for the record I didn’t really play Pon De Floor… did a live bootleg where I mix the synth part over Steve Angello’s “Rave N Roll” which isn’t even out yet.
See you next time!
A
stfu FLO, king of africa is old. douster’s only gem was the i’ll get you remix he did. aaand who cares about the damn video-skratch live were you rollin balls or something? give him a break TROLL.
That’s what I wanted to hear from you but leaving everybody not knowing what’s up is not so cool. You could at least said something at the start of your set but doesn’t matter.
The only thing I was really worried about was actually that you might not manage to arrive in time because I saw that you had two gigs in one day. But you did it. ;D
Set was great don’t get me wrong. I just wanted to give feedback.
Anyway.
Rave N Roll is out since the beginning of July in Germany on iTunes. ;D
Stand on the Word + Flange = Surprisingly good results.
Flo, you are being far too critical. Do you think it’s easy to fly around the world playing perfect sets at each gig? Like he said, it’s impossible to please 100% of the crowd. Don’t get pissed because he didn’t use visuals or his song selection wasn’t creative enough. Go see him at the do-over or something. A-trak, keep up the good work, you are one talented being.
Hey Trizzy!
I was at your Pacha show when you went down to play in Ibiza, and it was off the chain! I’m moving to Montreal (Vive les Franco-Quebecois!) next year for school and I know you’re from there, is there any chance you’re going to be in town for a show in the near future?
And keep killin em, Dirty South Dance 2 was incredible and every new A-Trak remix I hear just gets better and better!
@flo, forget the visuals man, appreciate trizzy’s music. i woulda enjoyed watching him mixing in complete darkness. & i bet his set would still be the sickest. trizzys a beast.
Ooohhh come on people, lets finish this whole “Flo”-conversation…I`ve been listening to dozens of Trizzys sets, and that boy is a sick motherfucker…..period!
Maybe that dude “Flo” is actually Douster, and Trizzy showed Dousters girl a good time:-)
PS:Wtf is Douster?!? some cheap chinease viagra immitation?!?
See you in Düsseldorf trizzy….
MELT! Festival was amazing. Shit…damn! i will be in Zurich at the Nasty Trash Party on August 20th….Booom. You have to rock the Börse!!!
Trizzy!
Any chance you’ll be putting out the set list for this Do-Over performance?
Yo the Dips are asking fans on twitter for which producers to put on the album…. Get on that SON!
I really need to make it out to LA for one of these parties!
Being a lost Montrealer in Dusseldorf, I was really happy to catch you live…While I was hoping to relive the energy I felt when I saw you at Sona or at 1234, I must say that i was somewhat dissapointed. Then I realised that it was not really about you, you were playing a set that catered that the rather bland Dusseldorf crowd, but that I missed the energy of the Montreal crowds and the hip hop as well… Sad to say but after one too many yahoo trying to jump on the dj booth and mosh pitting like they were at a Jackass 10 year reunion, I left the building at 2AM…. Until I cath you agian at an airport….One!
nice backyard location