Default Interviews – Martyn

October of 2011 will see the release of Martyn’s sophomore album ‘Ghost People’ on Brainfeeder. As a means of introduction Default will do a double feature, consisting of an interview with Martyn and a review of the upcoming album. For this first installment we sat down with Martyn and talked about the album and concept behind it, his longstanding collaboration with visual artist Erosie, the current scene and his own label 3024.

Harrison: How’s life and where are you right now?

Martyn: I’m fine, thanks. Currently in the studio in DC, making some new music.

You moved to DC a while back, why? Wouldn’t the more obvious choice have been something like London or Berlin?

Well, if that had been a purely musical choice, then yeah definitely, but it wasn’t. I used to live in Eindhoven, moved to Rotterdam and after six years my wife, who is American, and I decided to move to DC. I already knew the area well and was spending more and more time in the U.S. anyway, so that made it a logical move.

Has DC treated you well so far?

Absolutely, and I have to say that I now actually enjoy not living in the centre of a musical hub. I’ve always lived in urban areas, often in the inner city, so it’s refreshing for me to reside outside of them for once. At the moment I thoroughly enjoy spending a week or so in Berlin or London, taking in a multitude of new musical impressions and then travelling back to DC where I can process it all. I also feel that it provides me with a different, more distant perspective on music. I think it’s easy to become heavily influenced by your surroundings up to a point where it may even lead to copying things you hear rathen than actually creating something uniquely your own.

That begs the question what the scene in DC is like?

America is much more rock and hip-hop oriented so apart from the major cities like L.A. or New York the electronic music scene is relatively small. Especially in medium sized cities like DC it’s mostly rock. I occasionally head into the city to check out new bands that friends recommend to me though, the last thing I saw was The XX, before that La Roux, Daedelus, stuff like that. Going and out visiting clubs I hardly ever do anymore, I think there just comes a point when you’ve mostly seen it all.

Especially when you’re often playing venues during the weekend.

Exactly, so when I get a weekend off I like to just spend it at home doing, you know, really boring things sometimes! (laughs).

You said in a recent interview that after the release of ‘Great Lengths’, your previous album, you felt empty for almost a year and found it hard to call upon new inspiration for a follow-up. What did you undertake during that year?

Perform a lot really, and remix. The impact of “Great Lengths” was quite considerable, so I was able to do more and also much larger gigs, including a number of major festivals like for instance Lowlands and Sonar. It was a great experience, both being able to perform there and at the same time expanding my vision through that same process.

What did you discover?

Well, actually what eventually became the concept behind “Ghost People”. Because while I enjoyed performing at festivals, I found that I had a hard time dealing with all the people that visit them mainly for the lifestyle, so to speak. They’re not at all interested in the music or the artists but rather in everything that surrounds DJ’s and DJ-culture. It clashed with what I do and how I approach things; when I play a festival I want to reach people with my music instead of being bothered about whether or not the backstage area has a masseusse or not. The focus seems to be on all kinds of fringe issues that I honestly couldn´t care less about, that do not speak to me at all. These things have nothing to do with music, they´re the concern of this group of empty people that manifest there just to, you know, be hip, to belong really.

Hence the name `Ghost People´.

Indeed. They´re just there for the talk, for the free drinks and whatnot. The amount of people that actually do come for the music, that do want to experiment and listen to or perform new things is very small in comparison.

Ghosts, who when the next `big thing` arrives, will hop on that bandwagon without so much as looking back.

Exactly. That´s what the album is about. I want to communicate with my music and reach people on a very direct level. It´s what drove me to make the album sound the way it does.

I understand. It´s overall sound is divergent from that of ´Great Lengths` though. More agressive, dance-floor oriented and harsher.

Yeah, to me the first album was a showcase of what I´m capable of. It contained a lot of styles, from house to dubstep and techno and even some ambient. You might call it my musical business card of sorts. ´Ghost People´ has a clear focus, I really wanted to go for one sound and explore it to the fullest this time.

Why this particular sound, was that a conscious decision?

Hmm, I’m not sure really. You start collecting ideas and then somewhere in the process that follows, after shaping the first couple of tracks, you begin to see a pattern, a direction. Once you find that and stick to it, the rest of the album follows naturally. I usually start by planning ahead though, thinking about the possibilities and working with lists and sketches etcetera, perhaps it’s a Dutch thing (laughs).  But that never really works out you know, it’s just not something you can wrap your ahead around using a large whiteboard with arrows.

So basically once your careful planning has run amock, things start falling into place?

Yeah I guess so. (laugh)

How would you describe the Martyn sound?

Hmm, that’s a hard one. I think my roots lie in Chicago and Detroit but that from the mid-90’s onwards it’s been influenced heavily by a number of different styles, in particular from England. Things like garage and dubstep and drum & bass. I’d like to think of it as a modern Detroit sound myself.

I asked because when it comes to genres, there is a continuing trend to label your music “dubstep”. You’ve said yourself that the last real 140 BPM dubstep track you made was back in 2008. Does it bother you when you see people persistently placing you in that one, narrow category?

Nah, not really. It’s inevitable. I’m indifferent to genres in the sense that people only feel that need to classify once a record is out. By then, I’ve moved on. It can be annoying sometimes though when it comes to bookings. In certain cases I find myself on a bill with people that are making music on an entirely different level and I wonder why I’m in between them. It’s something that 2562 has to deal with a lot as well. Often times I find myself on an all-dubstep or all-techno line-up, which makes me the odd one out. It’s difficult to get my sound across and have people get into it on such occassions. Then again, it’s got something going for it as well, always being the original one that doesn’t truly belong. Eventually it may lead to a difficult crowd, likely because their expectation of the music is different from what I play, but that can also be a good thing. I’ve had people come up to me after a show and tell me that they really enjoyed what I did although they were expecting something else, so it evens out.

I’d like to stay with the idea that some sort of middleground is developing within the current scene where genre boundaries that used to be clear are beginning to overlap more. In terms of productions take for instance people like Sigha and Cosmin TRG who have moved from d&b and dubstep to a hybrid form with techno. In DJ-sets a trend to incorporate multiple styles is reflected as well. What’s your take on this development and where would you position yourself within it?

It’s interesting that you would say that, because I always consider myself and my music to be quite different from most of the names in that category, for me there is a clear distinction. What is interesting is how, after the passing of minimal a couple of years ago, people seem to be a lot more open to new musical influences from outside their usual perspective, which in turn allows for new things to be added to established styles. I think that basically paved the road for, for instance, guys like Joy Orbison who were making a new type of house. You now see big names from Berlin playing funky English records and at the same time English DJ’s playing more and more Ben Klock records, it’s become somewhat of a meltingpot in a sense.

So what are some of the names that excite you right now?

Hmm, good question. I really, really enjoyed Morphosis’ album on Delsin and all recent Redshape material. Actress and Zomby, very diverse things.

Forward thinking music.

Yes, and very personal as well. The Morphosis album I found a truly personal album, no trends, no hip influences, just straight from the heart. You can hear that he didn’t visit the Berghain every week, you know what I mean? It has a certain adulthood about it that I really like.

How does this diverse interest translate to your DJ-sets?

I always like to play stuff that I personally like in my sets, and always end up forgetting to play my own music (laughs). I use Serato, which allows me to take a lot of music with me. Usually I’ll have a starting point from where to begin a set but the road to and eventual end are always open. It could go a myriad of ways really. I always aim to create a musical whole out of a number of different styles without immediately considering myself an “eclectic” DJ so to speak.

Tell us about the decision to release the album on Brainfeeder, how did that come about?

I’ve known Flying Lotus for quite some time now, I think we met just before I finished my previous album. He liked what I was doing and used some of my music in his liveset, and I likewise really enjoyed his work and played a couple of small festivals he organised and that’s how the connection got established quite firmly. One day we were discussing my plans for a new album and he basically said that if I felt like releasing it on a label different from my own, he’d be happy to. I considered it for a while and then decided it’d be a great idea, I knew the label and the people and also knew that I would have complete artistic freedom. I realized that Flying Lotus was very interested in the visual side of things, which was important to me as well because of my collaboration with Erosie.

Right, you’ve worked closely together with him for a long time. I noticed one particular theme that you seem to have in common, that of Horror Vacui, could you elaborate on that?

The Horror Vacui is first and foremost Erosie’s thing, it’s also in essence an art term. It means, put very simply, that one can’t or doesn’t want to see emptiness in the sense that there’s an enormous amount of graphic detail which in turn makes it very hard to determine what exactly it is that you’re looking at. Erosie has implemented it in a large number of his works and it has also been the subject of many long nights of philosophical conversations between the two of us.

Has it influenced your work as well?

In a sense. For instance, for the track “Horror Vacui” I used a Monotron to create a collection of random sounds and textures, which seem not to belong and thus represent a kind of chaos. It’s a very good example of the closeness of our collaboration; even though he works with visuals and I work with audio there’s a definite overlap in terms of concepts, themes and ideas. I’m known for incorporating a wide variety of styles into my work and Erosie does that as well, transcending the level of pure graffiti or street-art.

What role will he play in your upcoming tour?

We picked a number of cities that really inspired us both, like London, Berlin, New York and Paris, and wanted to find a way to collectively express our mutual work in these particular cities. In London that has, for instance, lead to an underground space where he’ll be at work for a couple of days and which will then be used as the venue for my release party. In Berlin, he’s going to paint a huge wall we found, which we’ll present during the day and afterwards I’ll be in the Berghain for a set. That way, every city offers a different ambience which enables us to do something unique everywhere. I’m very excited about it.

You also run your label, 3024, together. How are things on that side?

Well, 2011 has been a good year. We started the label as a means for me to release my music on, but now that I’m releasing ‘Ghost People’ on Brainfeeder space has become available to release material from other artists as well. I have to say I quite like taking on the role of A&R manager and just making some time to scout new music and new talent. It was hard at first as to a lot of people 3024 was really all about my music, but once we made clear that the door for new music was open, that gradually changed. People approach me more often now and we receive a lot of demo’s. We’ve got a couple of interesting things lined up, including new work from Jon Convex and Mosca, and there might be another EP by me featuring material that’s a bit different from what I usually do, so yeah it’s going well.

Good to hear. Some final questions. What’s on your iPod right now?

Philip Glass. I was asked to do an article for Resident Advisor about a number of EP’s that I enjoyed or had been listening to for a long time and there was one from Philip Glass among those as well. I ended up browsing through my collection and stumbled upon a lot of his other work which I’m now re-listening so to speak. Great travel music too.

What are your weapons of choice when it comes to production?

It varies. The basis is always Logic, but I use Ableton a lot as well and I like to collect small gadgets like effect pedals or synths like the Monotron. I record a lot of audio myself, I carry a recorder with me on the road which leads to an extensive library of recordings that I can use. So, in essence, a mix between digital and analogue equipment.

Cool. Thanks ever so much for taking the time to talk to us and I wish you all the best for the upcoming album release and tour!

Thanks, my pleasure!

Ghost People will be released on Brainfeeder October 10th. A release-party is set to take place in London on September 15th, which will be followed by a special tour featuring on-site collaborations between Martyn and Erosie in a number of different cities.

Tracklist ‘Ghost People’

01. Love And Machines feat. Spaceape
02. Viper
03. Masks
04. Distortions
05. Popgun
06. I Saw You At Tule Lake
07. Ghost People
08. Twice As
09. Bauplan
10. Horror Vacui
11. We Are You In The Future

Interview and words by Harrison van der Vliet (Showhost Default)

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