Duck Sauce

All Music Guide:

Responsible for the impossibly infectious Boney M.-sampling party anthem "Barbra Streisand," Duck Sauce are the side project of Boston superstar DJ Armand Van Helden and Montreal turntablist A-Trak. Van Helden is one of the most successful artists on the commercial dance scene, having released six studio albums, a U.K. number one with "You Don't Know Me," and several iconic remixes including Tori Amos' chart-topping "Professional Widow." A-Trak, aka Alain Macklovitch, the younger brother of Chromeo's Dave One, is the founder of Fool's Gold Records, was Kanye West's personal tour DJ, and has produced records for Kid Sister and Lupe Fiasco. The pair teamed up in New York in 2009 to create a dancefloor-friendly sound that incorporated filtered disco, old-skool hip-hop, funk, electro, and late-'90s French house, and often sampled '70s artists such as debut single "Anyway," which borrowed the melody from Final Edition's "I Can Do It." Following the release of their Greatest Hits EP, their second single, "Barbra Streisand," which sampled Boney M.'s "Gotta Go Home," became one of the biggest tracks at the Miami Winter Music Conference and went on to reach number three in the U.K. at the end of 2010. In 2012 they released the single "Big Bad Wolf," which came with a video directed by Keith Schofield featuring the shocking introduction of something called "crotchfaces." The video was nominated that year for an MTV Video Music Award.

Wikipedia:

Duck Sauce is an American DJ duo consisting of Armand Van Helden and A-Trak. The duo is signed to Fool's Gold Records.

History [edit]

The pair aims to produce disco house tracks that will appeal to club DJs.

Their first tracks are "aNYway" and "You're Nasty". Their EP, Greatest Hits, was released September 2009. The track "aNYway" capitalizes "NY" to signify the band's origins in New York. The song is sampled from "I Can Do It" by Final Edition.

In the summer of 2010, Duck Sauce released a track called "Barbra Streisand", named after the singer of the same name. The track heavily samples the 1979 song "Gotta Go Home" by Boney M, which itself is based upon the original tune "Hallo Bimmelbahn" by the German band Nighttrain. The famous hookline is written by Heinz Huth. "Barbra Streisand" was first played at Miami Winter Music Conference 2010, and gained heavy DJ and radio support in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Norway, Austria, Poland (Polskie Radio 4), France, Finland, Romania, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Sri Lanka. In Australia, "Barbra Streisand" was first heard on the radio station Triple J, while in New Zealand it made its debut on Auckland student radio station 95bFM. The song has since also moved to various commercial radio stations and has increased in popularity. In the UK it peaked at number 3. and it reached Number 1 on the Australian ARIA Club Chart as of 12 September 2010. For Billboard magazine week ending December 18, 2010, the song reached the #1 position on the Dance/Club Play Songs chart. On April 26, 2011, the song was featured in Glee's 18th episode in their second season entitled "Born This Way". The song is also featured in the Vitamin Water Revive commercial. The "Barbra Streisand" music video has over 67 million views.

"Big Bad Wolf" was released by Duck Sauce in 2011 on BBC radio and samples wolves howling. The music video features genitalia replaced by human heads. A-Trak notes "When Keith came up with this idea of 'crotchfaces,' we just thought it was hilarious."

Awards and Nominations [edit]

International Dance Music Awards [edit]