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DRUM & BASS / BREAKS / DUBSTEP
www.guestlist.net
DJ TOUR SCHEDULE Subfocus
EXCLUSIVEINTERVIEW
Issue 30 / August 2011
Here at The Guestlist Network we like to make life easy for you, so we’ve provided Drum and Bass extraordinaire Subfocus’ tour schedule especially for you!
05/08/2011: Senssi, Tampa (FI) 06/08/2011: The Circus, Helsinki (FI) 09/08/2011: Mallorca Rocks (LIVE), Mallorca (ES) 10/08/2011: Ibiza Rocks (LIVE), San Antonio (ES)
13/08/2011: Relentless Boardmasters Festival (LIVE) Watergate Bay nr. Newquay (UK)
19/08/2011: Pukkelpop Festival (LIVE), Hasselt (BE)
20/08/2011: The Watersplash, Channel Is (UK) 26/08/2011: Reading Festival (LIVE) Reading, England (UK) 27/08/2011: Leeds Festival (LIVE), Leeds (UK) 28/08/2011: SW4 Festival (LIVE) Clapham, London (UK) 28/08/2011: The Clapham Grand (DJ Set), London (UK) 01/09/2011: Guvernment, Toronto (CA) 02/09/2011: Quad, Atlanta, Georgia (US) 03/09/2011: Electric Zoo Festival, New York (US)
MARTYN
Daniel.Muldoon @guestlist
Hi Martyn, how have you been? Pretty busy. I’ve played a lot of festivals this summer, so I’ve been flying back and forth between Eu- rope and the States, where I live.
DNB BITS
Mikal has released a Fabric Live mix on the Metalheadz label and the track listing looks set to be a banger with features from Friction, K.TEE and Commix.
Ill Skillz are preparing to release their debut album entitled Nectar and Ambrosia this month. Exciting stuff in light of the erm, interesting content on their Stay Forever LP.
Chase and Status are to headline UKF Bass Culture this November at the grand Alexandra Palace in north London, alongside a huge line-up of another 30 acts across three stages.
How is your music received in the US? Well, the US is a very different place musically; it has a primarily Rock and Hip-Hop culture so it takes quite a long time to convince people to listen to Electronic mu- sic. It feels like soldiering in a way, spreading the gospel of Electronic music; it’s hard work but the crowd is very appreciative.
What do you think of the Dubstep scene right now and where are you at? I’m not in Dubstep! [Laughs] I first encountered it through the early Burial stuff and Kode 9 and Digital Mystikz... At the time I was playing loads of Drum and Bass and some House and Techno and I was in- spired by it, but I never considered myself a real Dubstep artist or one of the founders. Now Dubstep has blown up and changed quite drastically in a musical way; you see a lot of new people coming in and taking credit for music they probably didn’t even know about
Ahead of the release of his new album Ghost People, Electronic musician Martyn chatted to us about Dubstep, his record label and the direction Dance music is taking
two years ago. There are a few people like Magnetic Man who are truly deserving of the hype because they were there in the very beginning - Skream, Benga and Artwork were there back in 2005 when the name ‘Dubstep’ didn’t even exist, so for them it is fully deserved I think.
Where are you at with your music right now when you DJ? I’m playing a lot of straight-up House and Techno and even some sort of Pop-y Nu-Wave-y stuff...
come on your second album, Ghost People? I think it shows the direction of where I am going. It’s sort of four- to-the-floor-y but it still has my organic sounding, sample-based sound and I think it’s a good pre- cursor to the album. It took a while to find a direction that I wanted to take and it was hard work but I’m really happy with the result.
How did your record label 3024 come about? Wow! That goes back a long time.
“The US is a very different place musically. I’m soldiering in a way,
spreading the gospel of Electronic music.”
It’s becoming more interesting for me now that the tempo is going down a bit in UK music; it’s much easier to mix older House tracks so I can play anything between 120bpm and 130bpm. We have 15 to 20 years of Dance music at our disposal now so it’s a good time to start digging out old records and finding things that no one has used, which is what I like about DJing anyway!
Is your new single, ‘Mask/ Viper’, a taster of what’s to
Well Erosie, the co-founder, and I are both from Eindhoven, in the south of The Netherlands, and we started working together in 2001. I was promoting Drum and Bass nights and needed someone to design flyers. I already knew Erosie - at the time he was a graffiti street artist - but the flyer thing was what connected us in a professional way. We’re on the same wavelength, him in a visual way and me in a musical way, so later we started the 3024 label together. 3024 is the zip code in
Rotterdam where we were both living.
So what has your tour sched- ule been like this summer? Horrific! I try not to look at it! [Laughs] It’s actually not been that bad. I’ve been doing live shows this summer as well as DJ’ing, which is quite new for me. It’s inspiring but also quite stressful because you have to rely on all this equipment, so every time I play I’m like, “DON’T CRASH!” As I’m not super experienced at it a lot of things still go wrong, but it’s trial and error and musically it’s a lot of fun. At first I kind of held on to the structure of the original songs but now I use loops and re-arrange them on the fly... Sometimes I drag it out for 10 minutes if I like it! It’s quite freestyle, it’s good.
Finally, here’s a scenario: you’re exiled to a desert island and you’re only allowed to bring two people. Who would they be? My wife and Miles Davis.
Martyn’s second album Ghost People is out on the 3rd of October
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