Hello Fader friends! I took a couple of weeks off from my Around The World column because, well, I wasn’t going around the world that much. I was mostly recording, first finishing up my Infinity +1 and Fabriclive mix CDs that are both dropping in 2 weeks, and then starting cooking up some new material for the year. I did travel a little bit. I went to visit my family in Canada.

Here’s a picture of Canada:

I played a gig in Vegas during the Magic trade show, for my homies Cassette Playa, Fruition and Undftd. Here’s a picture of Vegas:

And then last week, while I was supposed to stay home to prepare for my tour, I decided to hop on a plane and go to Paris for 2 days of Fashion Week. Call it Fashion (2*week)/7. OK, bad math joke. What happened is, I saw Kanye in New York when he curated the Vanessa Beecroft show at Deitch Studios and he convinced me to come and be dandy with the gang. So I packed my monocle and crossed the Atlantic to attend some fashion shows for the first time. We checked out Givenchy, Hussein Chalayan, Sonia Rykiel, YSL and Viktor & Rolph. I tried my best to make sense of it all. It was all women’s collections. I took pictures OF the paparazzi. I embraced the stereotype and ate snails. And I stayed at Hotel Amour, which I reviewed for my youtube series:

When I came home I only had 3 days to get ready for my tour, but I crammed like it was midterms and pulled it together. Whew! Got some new material for the tour. Also got a lightbox. Wouldn’t mind a lunchbox. Had a minor disaster making t-shirts but we fixed that in the nick of time too. So I went to Toronto for the first show of the March run. But that wasn’t really an A-Trak show. It was part of this Red Bull “Thre3 Style” series of events; this one was at Circa, a very big club with an escalator inside it. As soon as I arrived in town I had to do 3 hours of press: 3 filmed interviews for Canadian television (it’s in color!) and a photo shoot. Then after dinner I went to the show, where I actually had to judge a DJ battle. Not a DMC style battle though, this was a party-rocking thing. 15 minutes each, with contestants from across the country. A bunch of Canuck buddies were judging with me, including Fool’s Gold soldiers Jokers of the Scene. Arthur Baker was there too! Then I went on and played my set, where I tested out a few new things for the first time. To finish off the night I ate a breakfast bagel across the street from the hotel. I did not know it was possible to cook eggs in a microwave.

Saturday I flew back to New York for my Studio B show with DJ Mehdi. New York shows are always important to me. I try and go the extra mile to get people to come out because a memorable NY show is like extra-memorable. This time we covered the city in posters. Mehdi flew in that day so we hadn’t planned much, but he and I have played so many shows together that we’re comfortable just going with the flow when we tag-team. After Dave P, JDH and Nick Catchdubs warmed up the oven, we jumped on and started what turned into a close-to-4 hour set together. The place was packed, we had 1300 people in there and we just went with the flow. I loved it. Thank you New York! There’s some great pictures over at Nicky Digital, Metromix and CarolineFM.

I had 2 days off, they flew by in a flash as I got ready to hit the road for 2 weeks. Phoners every day! If you’re going to SXSW and/or WMC, the Fool’s Gold events are announced on our blog. If you were there last year, you know what to expect….

More tall tales of travels next week!