Martinez

Martinez, by birth Martin Swanstein, was born in 1981 and raised in the southernmost part of Sweden. At an early age he discovered techno and house music. Since he already played various instruments it was a natural progression to begin producing music himself. He also got into DJing and started hunting down techno records and got into mixing. Some years later, a demo tape earned him the opportunity to develop his production skills in the Wrong Steps studio in Stockholm, where he co-produced some of his own tracks together with the French producer Manuel Perez. One of these early tracks later appeared as "Late Night Groove" on Martin's debut 12" on the Swedish label Deeplay Music.

In 2000 Martinez moved from his small hometown in Sweden to the more open musical climate of the Danish capital, Copenhagen. This encouraged him to put even more time and energy into his music productions and not long after this he landed a record deal with the renowned Guidance Recording label in Chicago. First out was the "Laidback Grooves EP" with its mix of Deep House and Broken Beats and two more EP were to follow. Martinez' earlier work includes remixes for Danish pop/house act Filur as well as Silicone Soul, Jussi Pekka, Dibaba, Spiro Projecto and later Underworld, Luna City Express, Miss Kittin, Mathew Dear & Seth Troxler, Joel Mull, Leon and his remix of Nathan Fake's "The Sky Was Pink" was a big hit in the DJ world.

Martinez' sound comes from in the deeper and jazzier fields of electronic music. In the middle of 2003 Martinez began to feel a stronger passion for the techier and more experimental sounds of house music. He started to work more with samples and electro-based sounds as well as introducing something he's coined as "Cosmic House" - a spacey house sound mixing up tech, atmosphere and colourful melodies. Not long after this Martinez received a call from Steve Bug, who was interested in a release on his deep/tech house imprint, Dessous Recordings. This resulted in the "Skywalker EP", which didn't disappoint and inspired a whole new side to Martinez's music, edgier and more twisted, the more so the better!

In the summer of 2004 Martinez launched his own label, Out of Orbit Recordings, which has been a platform not only for his own music, but for his friends too: Trentemøller had a huge success with Beta Boy/orb003 and Zvukbroda, Nima Gorji, Robert Babicz, Jussi Pekka & Robert Leiner have also released material. Martinez also released two tracks on the Berlin based Get Physical label and in 2005 "Shadowboxing" came out on Steve Bug's new imprint, Audiomatique Recordings. In November that year, Martinez also released a vinyl only album called "Internal Space" on his Out of Orbit imprint. It was praised and played by Sven Väth, John Digweed and Loco Dice to name a few.

Towards the end of 2006 Martinez' music taste and productions began to develop in new directions again and he ventured deeper into his love for the minimalistic techno oriented sounds, more stripped down and focused on fewer sounds. After a while in the studio experimenting with this sound he launched a new label called: Re:connected, an output for Martinez's more minimal and techno oriented productions. Martinez' first two releases on Re:connected exploded and were highly supported by major international DJ's such as: Richie Hawtin, Ricardo Villalobos, Sven Väth, Loco Dice and Miss Kittin. 2007 witnessed the continual success of productions in this vein and that year he released his second full length album, "A Chemical Imbalance" in November. This release is a modern techno album with influences of Ambient, Dub and early Deep House, influenced by his love for the label Guidance.

From that point on Martinez' releases developed more and more towards Minimal Techno, until in 2008 when he returned to a more housy style, kicking off with his release "Momowha". Finally, in 2010 Martinez released his third album "The Paradigm Shift" on Moon Harbour Recordings. On this album Martinez rides the perfect balance between Dancefloor and Chillout tunes. Mainly influenced by Chicago House, "The Paradigm Shift" also covers Techno, Breakbeat and dubby Downtempo sounds.