Fool’s Gold

The Creators Project: How did Fool’s Gold first come together?

A-Trak: I had an indie hip-hop label with my brother Dave [Dave 1 of Chromeo] called Audio Research. Then my brother started Chromeo and starting touring, and I got the Kanye gig. We were just doing a lot of stuff and not really putting out records. Around 2005 or so, the music that I was playing as a DJ was gravitating more toward this whole movement in the Northeast in the States, where a bunch of the DJs were playing a mishmash of different genres—everything that was club-friendly and uptempo.

Is this when the group began?

A-Trak: Around this time I met Nick Catchdubs and we forged this friendship that was based around sharing music and talking about music. We had a lot of questions, like, “Why is this guy working with this producer? He should work with this other guy!” and “What if this record had artwork by this guy?” What ended up being the catalyst was when I started making music with Kid Sister, which was also when I started experimenting with my own production. Pretty quickly we had this single of hers that was ready to be pressed up. But we didn’t know which label to release it on. That’s when we decided to start this label together. I knew Josh from that same scene of doing parties in New York. Josh would design some of the artwork for the parties, and I had already hired him to redo my website. When Nick and I started the label, it was a no-brainer to have Josh come in and be the in-house art director.

It must be nice working with an in-house artist. You know his work will always been consistent and unified.

A-trak: Completely, that was the whole idea of having Josh be a part of the company. We knew what we were going to get. We were going to have these covers that would really pop. And now, when we sign new acts, they’re like, “Do we get to do a cover with Dust La Rock? Oh cool!”

Do you tackle a website with the same philosophy you use to design record covers?

Dust La Rock: I am traditionally a designer of websites, not a programmer. So while I have to keep the functionality, navigation, and all the technical stuff in mind, I just have fun with it. When I did the first site for Alain he just said, “People know I like animals.” That’s what I got and I just ran with it. I just created these little worlds. One was the ice world, one was a safari. Some of them had these little weird, psychedelic, and surreal elements to them. It just worked.