Martyn wonder why

This was a helpful resource to stimulate ideas and a fresh outlook on an old theme. I really liked the double use of the word crown and the imagery of his crown of thorns being symbolic of the crown of life that his death and resurrection would purchase for us.

I had heard this phrase used years ago at the church I grew up in and I think it might even have been in an old song, but I thought it might be a cool theme for a celebration song at some point, so I had jotted it down.

Again, as I began to worship using this phrase as a response to what Jesus has done through the cross, I just started singing the complete chorus melody progression. That was about as far as I got in that sitting. The pool was way too tempting! When I got home and assessed what I had so far it became clear that although I had a good starting framework, the song was far from being complete. I have tried to learn, that this is when the hard work begins.

The inspiration is over and the perspiration starts. The temptation can be to stop crafting the song too early and settle for a good song when you could be onto a great song! Frustratingly, I knew I needed another verse and a pre-chorus that would really set the chorus up.

Without a form of pre chorus, it felt like there was not enough tension building into the chorus. The revelation of Jesus actually choosing the cross and the fact that he could have decided against it, given his fully human limitations, led me specifically to his time of emotional agony in the garden of Gethsemane.

Luke Yet not my will, but as you will. As I pondered on these verses, I really felt like I wanted to tell this amazing part of the passion story as part of the song. Honestly, I was pretty shocked when these lines flowed out. Whenever people find out about your secret weapons — you just have to find more secret weapons.

People lump you in the dubstep category and the future garage category, is that a bit of a hindrance to you? After that I let that kind of go because there was no real excitement to me in listening to it anymore. I should do something else, or quit music. It sounds quite simple and I think it really is.

I think other people make it a much more big deal than it really is. Where are you now? I grew up in Eindhoven, the south of Holland, then I lived in Rotterdam for a while. Both are major cities, in the Netherlands at least. Then I got married, my wife is American, and we moved to Washington, DC, for that mainly, not for the music. Now I kind of live in the suburbs, which is extremely quiet, absolutely nothing. The rest is just fields and mountains. I think this is a relevant thing to talk about.

All of these genres, future garage, this, that and whatever, are very much born out of the metropolis, London, New York, whatever. I have the same feeling in Berlin, where there are also lots and lots of musical influences, lots of people doing great clubs.

Go to your own little shack in a big field and do something with all this information. Obviously Portugal has a lot of interesting musical influences, so people should do something with that. Yeah, they say Eindhoven has a Calimero complex. Do you know Calimero? But the people from Eindhoven are always like, well, the best thing from Amsterdam is the train to Eindhoven. Definitely, all the people are very straightforward, a bit too honest sometimes.

You see it in other harbor cities, too, like in Hamburg. Even Manchester, Liverpool. I relate to those sorts of cities, I guess. More significantly than that, you come from a very sporting family, right? Yeah, he was good, he was good. I can do three. That was a proper minutes of doing it. Yes, there are two things I remember from my being a kid.

Standing in the woods while he would do laps as a recovery from an injury or something like that. He would have to run laps and I would look at the stopwatch and see if he was on schedule.

The other thing was counting the kicks. You hope you have some sort of talent and you build on this talent and try to make a living out of it as well. You started as a kid and you want to become bigger and bigger. Add to that your family life is radically different to the norm. When I grew up our family life was completely different, because everything revolved around Sunday, when the match was. Our rhythm in the week was completely different from other people. Plus your father is away a lot because of traveling and all that.

So it makes an impact, but I guess, I only learned from it. It seems you have quite a DIY approach. I see a lot of people with managers and entourages, but you run a successful independent record label yourself.

How do you do manage to do that and produce and DJ at the same time? With my album, I made it musically in about five months, I think, and then I spent the next five months being the label manager and getting the product out, sorting out distribution, chasing everyone, getting the artwork in check. Artwork seems like an important part of things. So apart from yourself, who have you released and are you going to be releasing on Recordings?

FlyLo did a remix for me. And then Illum Sphere for a new 12", which is exciting. This is nice because now I can promote other people as well.

Any questions for — and what should I call you, Mar-tyn or Mar-tyne? When you were in Lisbon you told us this story. Eighteen, yeah.

In Eindhoven we had this club. Eindhoven is between Amsterdam and Rotterdam on one side and Brussels and Ghent and Antwerp on another. In those days, this was where a lot of techno nights happened. Eindhoven had a little club called Funky Business and a lot of these DJs that played either in Amsterdam or in Belgium, they would come to Eindhoven and play the after-hours, say between four and nine in the morning or something.

I always wanted to go there but I was too young to get in. Thank god the bouncer was gay. Like, a very, very, very big gay guy, and we just had to kind of use our charm to get in. Then we were stuck in the back of the club so no one would chuck us out. You have to do what you have to do sometimes. I have a lot in America nowadays as well, but the bulk is still in Holland in storage. About 15, maybe. Twenty thousand. I started buying when I was seven with allowance money. That was my first single.

Which one did we play last time, can you remember? A little Prince interlude. I wanted to ask about vocals, because this reminded me. There are only about two tunes of yours that have got vocals on them. I associate your music with a very soul element, very soulful music. Is that intentional? The position that electronic music takes in Europe is kind of what indie rock is for the US.

And via, via, via, I got in touch with this band from London called the Detachments, which is kind of Joy Division for , something like that, but with a bit more electro-y influences. Just really nice songs. So I got really into that, you know like Maximo Park. I mean, I have some ideas for my next album that are in that direction as well. Hi, I wanted to ask you something about your production.

You use very dry sounds, I would say without any reverb. So what equipment do you use and is it intentional that you keep this dry sound really warm and? Or if the function is just to make it sound more cool. One thing to get a bit technical that people might find useful, if I do mix-downs, usually people just blast the music basically in the studio, have it really loud so you can hear every little detail and mix-down your tune like that.

If you play it at bare minimum volume, but you can still hear the vocal, the bass, the beat, things you want to bring across, but then bring it back up, the balance is perfect.

All the elements that you want to communicate are there. I like to keep things very organic, use a lot of extra sound, stuff that you get for free. Oh yeah. I use Logic Audio, a little bit of Ableton. So you do the basslines with the microKORG? How do you do the basslines? Because they are very good. Just standard Logic sinewave signals, then compress ande drive and do what you have to to make it fit. But when I make music I love to play my keys.

And another thing we did, with Ryan, we had this sound and the first thing I do is map it all over the keyboard and just start playing melodies. But I just want lots of keys, and it just makes me feel better having them. I might use only 20 of them, but at least I have 61 keys. But I think playing is very important, instead of just drawing blocks and stuff, I just like to have some sort of hands-on thing.

An MPC would be good for me as well, I think. Why Prince? I think he was one of the first singer-songwriters, whatever you want to call him, who really made a lasting impression on me, when I was about eight, nine. The Purple Rain days and a bit before that, he was huge back then. I started buying his music as soon as I could and it stuck with me all through my life. The first day I could fit it into a DJ set was one of the happiest days of my life. So how important is vinyl to you and your record label?

When you make your music do you do it in the hope people will be playing it on vinyl? I do like vinyl a lot and I buy a lot of vinyl still. But music comes in whatever format.

I suppose that tomorrow, there will be another invention, a new format, and that will be fine as well, as long as the music comes across and people are able to access the music. Obviously there is a physical appearance about vinyl, or even CDs nowadays, that I like better than buying MP3s online. If you give someone a record or you give someone a CD, it feels much better than giving them an iTunes gift card. So there is this physical thing I like about it, just to have something you can touch, a product.

This is why we spend a lot of time on the artwork. You give something to people and they can buy it in the shop and they have something to look at.

They do in regards to ten years ago, because then if you had a really big tune you might sell ten thousand or something, fifteen. Now you would sell two, three thousand. But good music will always prevail. In terms of dubstep and stuff it is really like yourself and Joy Orbison who are the very few who are selling When you spread it across a little bit more, I guess you have a little bit more sales than usual. Are we gonna finish with more starjumps, more exercise? Maybe if you've got George Morel to send everyone off on a good vibe?

Academy: London Martyn I feel good now, yeah. Benji B How has the city influenced your music? Benji B And what kind of clubs did this pilgrimage take you to? Martyn The Blue Note was the main one. Martyn Is it? Martyn Is that on Hoxton Square? Martyn The Blue Note was quite small, I guess, two floors. Benji B And where were you visiting from? Martyn From Holland. Martyn Something like that, and then come back and be all inspired.

Martyn Yes. Benji B And is also on your album Great Lengths on , which is your label. Martyn You can do an interesting arrangement and DJ at the same time. Benji B How long have you been DJing?

Martyn About 15 years. Benji B And how important has that been in formulating your identity as a producer? Martyn I never thought about making music in the first place, I was taken by surprise by everything.

Martyn Well, I see DJing as an emotional thing because you kind of open up to people, you stand there in front of a crowd. Benji B And what stuff can we hear in your DJ sets at present? Martyn Yeah. Benji B Have you got an example of music from that era you can play us? Martyn Old stuff? Benji B Yeah, maybe. Fingers Inc. Martyn Well, I like that. Martyn The Martyn music thing was my invention, it had nothing to do with making music. Martyn I think I have a whole library of different music in my head.

Benji B Definitely. Benji B So where did you start on that tune? Martyn Hard to remember, actually. Martyn Oh, no. Benji B So you started in the breakdown, basically. Martyn More or less. Benji B And what programs are you using for your stuff? Martyn I use Logic. Benji B Arrangement is a word you use a lot and I want to talk to you more about that. Martyn It could be anything. Benji B Talking of sound effects and segues, the album itself is arranged.

Martyn Not that literally, but I did arrange the tracks. Benji B Can we play another track from the record? Those are, you know, influential… Martyn Ticking all the boxes. Martyn Brainfeeder is very much an instrumental hip-hop-related thing, obviously with FlyLo and a couple of the other people involved in it.

Benji B And how does that work? Benji B The thing that links all those names for me is that as soon as you say them, I can instantly hear a sound. Martyn There is a theory that everyone who chooses a craft has to spend ten years of full-time dedication to get where he wants to be. Benji B I knew we were going to get onto football. Martyn I always have a football reference. Martyn As I said before, DJing is a very personal thing. Martyn I never was like that.

Benji B Are you just talking about how technology has changed that? Martyn Yes, I never really was like that and I always thought the label-covering thing was bullshit, really. Benji B People lump you in the dubstep category and the future garage category, is that a bit of a hindrance to you?

Martyn No. Benji B How has that shaped your musical brain? Benji B I think this is a relevant thing to talk about. Martyn Yeah, they say Eindhoven has a Calimero complex.