Ceoltronic Podcast 5: Fabric 50 feature with Martyn - RTE Pulse

To mark Fabric 50 I had Martyn on the show for a chat and a mix. I was live in the mix then afterwards. Ceoltronic broadcasts live every Thursday night from 22-24:00 GMT on RTE Pulse www.rte.ie/pulse
Fabric Press Release:

Martijn Deijkers' particular strand of bass defies genres or adjectives - to his fans and admirers, it's known simply as ‘Martyn Music.’ With a sound that became a cornerstone for dubstep in 2009, and a debut album (‘Great Lengths’) that became one of the most stylistically fierce long players the scene has produced to date, Martyn pushes a rebellious, out-of-the-box mentality into his every artistic venture. Commanding dancefloors with a strong sense of timing and attitude, his music revels in its relative simplicity – synth lines lounging atop swung drum patterns, all in turn massaged by warm low frequencies - a trait he’s reinforced with fabric 50, his first mix CD to date.

Born the son of a footballer in a music mad family in Eindhoven, Holland, it was his immediate family who sparked his love for vinyl. “I have been buying music for as long as I can remember really, as soon as I got a weekly allowance I spent it on 7” singles and albums. When I was studying I went clubbing a lot, there were a couple of clubs that I used to frequent, and I just got drawn to the music. When it came to house and techno I loved it, I enjoyed clubbing and listening to it but I just never really felt I was a part of that scene because I was too young. All the DJs that I saw playing were older, so I could appreciate the music as a follower but it wasn’t my generation. When I encountered drum & bass around 94/95, it made a huge impression on me, and I just felt at home in that style; I was like, ‘This is my generation, so maybe I can play some sort of part in this.’” – Martyn

After starting a club night along with a few others called Red Zone, named after the third track created by the merging of two records, Martyn began to explore his interest deeper through production. “We did the Red Zone nights for about 11 years, and I started DJing outside of the nights - at other venues and also in other countries. Around 2002-3, I was playing a lot and I found there was a void in the music. That’s why I started making my own music; just because I wanted to try and make something that I could play to bridge the gap. DJ Flight and Marcus Intalex, who used to play at our night, they started playing my music. After a while Marcus signed something to Soul:R, and Flight signed a 12 for Play:Musik, and that’s how I got my break, in 05, that’s where the recording career started.” – Martyn

With fabric 50, Martyn intertwines the essential elements of what makes his own style so pristine and easily recognisable, fusing dancefloor ready percussion with that element of raw soul - whether it’s vocal led or simply inferred with emotive chords – and synthesizers that harbour those distinct frequencies that positively shimmer. Anyone who has witnessed Martyn meticulously construct one of his DJ sets over the tail end of 2009 can testify to the pitch perfect, unfathomably smooth beat and vibe matching. Whilst the mix is loaded with welcome surprises like Hudson Mohawke’s ‘Joy Fantastic’ and Levon Vincent’s ‘Air Raid’ - tracks that might not work on every dancefloor - it’s an honest and healthy glimpse into the Dutchman’s current DJ perspective.

“I did the whole mix CD live just because I thought that was more honest than doing an Ableton DJ mix. It is how I would play live - not everything on the CD is perfect, but it’s not meant to be. That goes for my DJ sets and for my music as well; there’s always little bits and pieces that could have been much better or more streamlined or whatever, but that’s the beauty of music to me. I wanted it to be raw and honest. As for the selection, I just wanted to try and make it as varied as possible and get people from all different corners of the globe together on one CD. The idea of it was to bring together all these sounds and vibes, something I would never be able to do on a studio album, just because I’m not able to make all that sort of music. It's amazing music though, I love it, so I want to play it to people.” – Martyn

And the music Martyn selected for the mix reflects that personal change perfectly, leaning a little more towards music that takes house and techno as the nucleus from which to blossom. From the unique visions of producers like Actress (whose ‘Slow Jam’ veers poignantly away from the synth swells of Redshape’s mix of Martyn’s ‘Seventy Four’ with its spluttered sporadic melodies), Ben Klock and Zomby; to the polished percussion of Roska, Madd Slinky and Altered Natives, Martyn segues the tracks with a natural flair, blending rhythms emphatically, letting tried and tested productions like his own ‘Vancouver’ fuse wonderfully with brand new pieces like fellow Dutch producer 2562’s ‘Flashback.’

"Fabric on Saturdays is mostly about four-to-the-floor; my music may not always be so straight up but at the root of it all there's my house/techno background. I just think it’s interesting to show people how diverse music can be, if you make an effort and play a variety of things, some house alongside dubstep or instrumental hip hop. I will just have to make it work in this ‘Saturday vibe’. For me fabric 50 is sort of a temporary moment in time rather than the definitive Martyn mix, because I have been gigging so much over the past year, my sound has gradually moved a little bit more to straight up house and techno related music."

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