the technologist

Aside from Barclay Crenshaw (aka Claude VonStroke), there are a handful of US dance music ambassadors keeping the stateside scene interesting by a dangling thread.  Whereas Chicago, New York, and LA used to be the bastion of house music in the US, San Francisco is quietly taking over the underground movement in America, which is translating into big success over in Europe, where people still take dance music seriously.

Two of the aforementioned ambassadors are undoubtedly Justin and Christian Martin.  They helped found Dirty Bird records along with VonStroke and have crafted their own sound exlusively, following in the footsteps of San Fran pioneers the H-Foundation:  Hipp-E and Halo.

Whereas the H-Foundation’s sound is more dubby and contains old-school turned new-school acid elements, they share the same penchant for heavy drums as The Martin Brothers.  They also share the same desire to trip their listeners the fuck out, all while maintaining a degree of musical complexity found only in the work of people who understand music as well as music production software.

This stylistic credo is found not only in their production, but in their DJing as well.  From a recent interview on ResidentAdvisor with Justin Martin:

I’m always trying to find music for my DJ sets that rattles sound systems, but still has enough melody and interesting texture to expand your mind even if you’re sitting at home on a
snowy or rainy day.

Justin has been the more prominent of the two brothers recently with a flurry of stunning tracks and remixes that can be found on Beatport.com and through either the DirtyBird or Buzzin’Fly record label websites.  His early exposure to jazz and classical music as well as early Pink Floyd and Art of Noise reinforces the above notion that the survival of dance music depends on people who are musicians as well as beat aficionados.

People want songs that grab them and make them take notice of what their hearing in the same way a great track of any other genre does.  The Martin Brothers are cranking out layered and complex tracks with emotional density that just cannot be found in many of the other stagnating genres of electronic music.  They are fusing elements of house, electro, minimal, and techno and continuing the surge of the new sound also being propagated by VonStroke, Jesse Rose, Trentemoller, Dave Taylor (aka Switch), Dave Spoon, Thomas Schumacher, and many others.

Here is a sampling of their tracks:

Justin Martin’s remix of “Vesuvius”

Justin Martin - The Fugitive

Justin Martin - The Water Song

The Martin Brothers - Tricky Disco (Thizzy Disco Remix)