Akufen is the musical pseudonym of Montreal, Canada based artist, Marc Leclair. Since 1999, Akufen has been amassing a thick stockpile of 12" releases for labels like Perlon, Background, Traum, Oral, Trapez, and Force Inc. With influences ranging from Bootsy to Mancini to Moroder to Reich, Leclair's productions veer from challenging experimental techno to pop-oriented micro-house. For most of the tracks on 2002's My Way, his first full-length album for Force Inc., Leclair employed a technique he referred to as "microsampling." Leclair would spend hours of each morning recording material from AM/FM dials and a shortwave, and he would then use those recordings as fodder for his productions, splicing seconds into minute fragments (consisting of voices, song snips, acoustic guitar flicks, and all sorts of unidentifiable moments) and applying them to danceable, hook-heavy house tracks. The Doepfer A-100 series of synth modules also plays a significant role in the production of his sound. The anticipation for the album was increased significantly by a limited release of the album's feature cut, "Deck the House," a dazzling crazy-quilt of short-attention-span house dementia.

Akufen talking about DJ'ing: "The first time I touched a mixer and two turntables was in London. It was in 1993, I think I was there for a vacation. The march against the Criminal Justice Bill was taking place in The Streets, and I joined, I demonstrated like everyone else. There I met some of my closest friends, and I got to know my wife through them on that trip too. I stayed at their place and one of the guys was DJing. I was attracted right away, as a musician, to the turntables. I waited for them to go out of the apartment so that I could grab a few records and try to do it. The very first two records I mixed were perfectly in synch. It's only later I started to deteriorate through lack of practise. When my career started as a musician, DJing got swept under the carpet. My favourite time to DJ is at a private party, in a loft, at six in the morning, when everyone's completely fucked up. I just like to hit them on the brain with the music, just play the wackiest, weirdest shit. I really enjoy it – not for the same purpose as some other DJs, for the fame or anything – but on an education level. I want to educate myself and hear more music, know more about it. I enjoy mixing other people's music more than performing live. After a while you get bored of playing your own music over and over. You make it in the studio, you learn it to go on tour, you play it all the time, for a year or two or three… people always ask `please play this, or that'… I find playing other people's music is invigorating."

Leclair's pseudonym comes from the French word for tinnitis (ringing of the ears), acouphène.