CM>>>Hello Martin, your new album which will appear at the end o f this month is called “Chapters” a concept album, with a wide range of musical genres, sounds and a rich musical landscape. I’ve read in the press info that there are no direct answers about the questions about the concept of “Chapters”. But would you mind to tell me something about the inspiration behind this album?
Martin>>> Laughing… Ok ,do you want the long or the short answer. The short answer is it was a platform to find news was of being creative and finding where that creativity comes from. There is a much longer answers though for those who what to know...
Before I had come up with the idea of doing this album or even the approach for how to do it I was in a period of my life where I had written several original club tracks and a host of remixes as well. It's not to say I was not into the music I had created so far but I knew there was much more to writing music than I was giving myself room for. The end result is I got bored and hit my first real writers block. I know this because I would happily waste a couple of days playing Xbox instead of trying to come up with new songs.
I knew I was wasting my time but also new I need to create a reason to be inspired – to want to write music again. Hence the album idea. But I also knew I didn't want to just spend the next 6 to 9 months working on nothing but an album so came up with the idea of writing a series of eclectic EP's that would be the foundations for the music from the album itself.
I met Seb Godfrey from Drunkpark in London after coming back from a DJ tour in Australia which included Hobart, Tazmania where he is from. He had done the artwork for the interior of the club where I played called Syrup along with all their flyers and I was really into his work.
We discuss the idea of the album preceded by these Eps and knowing I wanted to connect the music with visuals concocted the idea of using each Ep to tell a sort of story of ideas and beliefs that I have had in my head and had been thinking about over the years.
At the end of the day I am a bit of a dreamer so some these ideas can seem a little bit hippyish in their roots and I also have to say I go through period of my life where sometimes I feel a lot more philosophical than others but I really wanted this new music I was going to create to completely reflect me at that moment in time. The idea of giving each Ep a theme and connecting the themes to the music by the visuals really excited me as a creative platform to find inspiration for new sounds and songs.
What I loved about working with someone as creative as Seb is he would also help to inspire and help the project keep moving forward. Working on your own all day with no other people adding to the creative pot can get mundane as I had already experienced so this album was the end result of discovering what it was that builds inspiration and motivation to be creative in the first place.
CM>>>Is it wrong to state that “Chapters” is a kind of frustrated reaction about nowadays-electronic musical circus?
Martin>>>The thing is I have never been a purist house or techno head as some guys. I want the album to reflect my background in music. I grew up listening to albums that were written to be a journey through the collection of all the music not just a group of individual tracks. I hear too many electronic albums these days that just feel like a bunch of club tracks chucked onto a CD and called and album for the sake of it. That's not what and album is about for me and I think it is a copout from trying to be really creative. I never listen to club music at home and it took me a while to realise its OK to be into different sorts of music as music is just there to serve a purpose at a particular moment in time. When I am in club or at a party I want to listen to house and techno – of course I absolutely love tis music. But when I am at home just in my flat or travelling on a train or walking along listen to my iPod I want something else - I want songs. I knew this album was more likely going to be listened to as a whole album in places other than the club so I wanted the final sound to reflect what I like to in those other environments.
CM>>>I was really speechless, after listening the first time to this great album. With each track the mood and the musical style varies and changes. From IDM, Techno over Trip-Hop Drum and Bass kind sounds you created a very unique sound. Am I wrong when I say that this album - this music – is your personal inventory of your musical socialisation and visions?
Martin>>>I couldn't have put it better myself. The album is the sum of all my musical experiences up to this moment in time. The result is an album that pulls on the last 17 years of popular and contemporary music I have ever been influenced by.
CM>>>What about the production process of the album – have you developed a concept and then started to create the tracks? Or have you had the idea for these tracks in your head for years and started to record them under the concept of “Chapters”?
Martin>>>Actually both. I would have different ideas floating around my studio hard drive and sometimes I would get the “concept” for each EP and that would suddenly join all the dots and I would be able to grab the different musical ideas I have had to fit the together to make a full EP. Sometime I sat down knowing full what sound I was looking for as I knew what I wanted it to represent on the EP it was going to be on. At the end of the day each EP came about from a different angle but this was what I wanted because it kept me excited by the whole project.
The advantage of this new digital era is you can easily work on several ideas and tracks at once because they can be easily saved on your computer. Before in the days of hardware and analogue this would have been much harder so the final album and sound also reflects the advantages or working with modern technology.
CM>>>The sound of "Chapters" is merging cinematic head movie music with danceable laid-back sounds. Music you can listen to and dance to with closed eyes. So I asked myself if you wrote the tracks not like a usual musician, more like someone who had more pictures than musical notes in his head?
Martin>>>I think when I write music I know the songs can be enhanced by visuals. I have always loved visual art. When I was very young most of my mates would love to go a play football where as I loved to draw. I' m not sure I was particularly good at it but I got a lot of pleasure from it. Any form of art is just creative communication and expression. Communicating is something that we are obsessed by. We do it by in many different ways either by language, science and art through both visual and audio means. Connecting visual with audio just makes so much sense to me. I was recently in La Sombra gallery in Madrid and I had gone on my own so was listening to my iPod. When I arrived I was listening to some old Pearl Jam tracks and as soon as I got there I knew I had the soundtrack wrong so I changed the music to Sigor Ros and bamm!!!!…. the to inputs were fitting together and I took more enjoyment from my time looking at the art there.
I did realise at the end of finishing the album that there was a lot of cinematic influence in there but this was not a preplanned concept as the melodies created were written over a period of 18 to 24 months so I guess it shows that I am obviously influenced by these sounds without directly thinking about it.
CM>>>Which kinds of instruments have you used for the organic sounds of this album?
Martin>>>Piano, acoustic and electric guitars (my original instrument), electric bass. All of the strings are from a softsynth but it is a sample based instrument so it has a very natural sound.
CM>>>..and how long have you worked on “Chapters”?
Martin>>>If you mean from the being if the album idea then over 2 years but its been about 18months since the project properly kicked into gear. Time flies when you are having fun.
CM>>>When you finished a track or maybe the complete album, do you have friends, family or partners who are allowed to criticise your music?
Martin>>>Yeah I play everything to my Dad actually even the club tracks. I really value his opinion because it isn't biased by musical trends. He only thinks about it in terms of the final song and its worth. He listens to some pretty crazy music from really leftfield jazz to world music by some artist who he tells me a famous but I have never heard of. Haha My Mum hates some of it. This does mean the more tracky club stuff I sent him he wouldn't always be as keen on if it didn't feel like it had a purpose... which is a very valid point.
CM>>>Who made the artwork for the album? It looks so organic-inorganic, reminding me of the timeless creations in Science Fiction in the late Sixties…
Martin>>>As I have mentioned Seb Godrey... total legend in his own time. He is working on the video now for the first single 'The Beginning' which will be out in 3 weeks with the album. Its mind blowing stuff. Really trippy. I also recently saw the final album artwork and was knocked side ways with how good it is. When we were working on the EP artwork Seb was limited but a 2 colour palete because we were printing the artwork as inserts so people could put it on their walls if they wanted. The trouble was I was releasing the EP on my own label Mutual Society and a colour insert was a lot more expensive and where its hard enough to sell vinyl these days anyway it seemed like an big risk. SO we decided on the 2 colours but this obviously gave Seb some real limitations. Now he can work in 4 colours its all gone to the next level. You will be able to see all the artwork with some wallpaper downloads etc from the website www.kingroc.com with the release of the album on 23rd March. There will also be some other free stuff in the website including unreleased tracks and remix parts so go check it out.
CM>>>You are working in the business for a long time, but do you still feel excited a few days before the release of the album? I mean this special album…
Martin>>>You make me sound like an old man... haha. But I guess you are right and it did take me quite a while to make my first album. I am really proud of the complete body of work including the Eps, the album and the artwork. I know can look back in 20 years time and say that was me, that represented what I liked at that moment in time. I find most musicians get over their own work very quickly but I am very happy with what I have done and just hope some other people enjoy listening t it as much as I enjoyed making it.
CM>>>Who sings on the tracks “Lunar People” and “Beautiful but Weird”?
Martin>>>Michael Hosie sings on 'Lunar People' and Barbara Alcindor sings on 'Beautiful But Weird'. I met Mike at the birthday party of a mutual friend, Serge Santiago. We got talking about the album and Mike said he was keen to get involved after I said I was looking to work with some singers. Barbara I met after she worked with me and Giles Smith on a Two Armdaillos track called 'Je Suis Differente'. She was a friend of Giles' through his secretsundaze parties but we hit it off straight away. I would like t do more work with her on a possible album project but we will have to wait and see as I now live in Berlin and she is in London.
CM>>>How you get in touch with electronic music? Did you go to parties, or have you heard it in the radio…?
Martin>>>I owe that entirely to my old friend Nick Fryer. I knew Nick since that age of 5 and he was the first one to get into electronic music. At first he was into hardcore and I was a rock kid and totally obsessed by guitars but later Nick introduced me to some stuff like Leftfield and Prodigy. We did a band project together where I was playing guitars and him and Tom Neville were producing and it wasn't until the band moved to London that I started to really get into the parties with the music.
CM>>>How have you started, as a Dj or a musician?
Martin>>>I started playing guitar when I was 10 but didnt really get really serious about it until I was 14. I actually fell into DJing after the band I was in split up and a local bar in Clapham, London called Inigo was about to open and were looking for DJ's. Tom Neville and I started playing there every Friday. I had only had decks for 6 months at this point so was luck to be able to start so quickly.
CM>>>Do you think that “electronic music will eat itself” if we don’t learn to care more about it and listen more carefully? ... I mean not just to consume everything that owns bass and a four on the floor drum...
Martin>>>I think dance music runs the risk of falling into mass consumerism because its so easy to write the tracks on a computer and put them out digitally. It takes a lot less effort now than it used to to get music out there and I think people are obsessed about get tracks into the beatport top 10 so as a result I hear a lot of music that sounds very similar. Its easy to forget its an art when you start doing something daily for an income but but if there is no passion in the creation process then what's the point. If someone wants to write nothing but four to the floor then that's toally fine with me as long as they are doing it for the right reason.
CM>>>Hmm, when I listened to the last track “The End” I thought “Is he using a real guitar?”
Martin>>>Yes. Its 2 riffs panned hard left and hard right with delay in top....
CM>>>What’s behind your artists name King Roc… ?
Martin>>>Ah yeah that illusive 'why the artist name question'. I had no idea when I came up with it that it would cause such interest… laughing. Basically I grew up listening to bands with band names so I always knew I wanted to have an alias. For me it is already more exciting than using your own name. I was also a massively into rock and it was like a nod to my roots. I never liked the name Martin Dawson. I just didn't think it sound very rock n roll to me. Funny thing is talking to some new German friends I have they were all telling me what a great name it is because for them its different. I guess it all about your perspective.
CM>>>But the “Two Armadillos” are still alive? Or is the producing of “Chapters” your pullout of the deep-house scene?
Martin>>>God no. I was away for 3 months in Brazil but Giles and I worked on TA stuff all the time I was doing the album. I love it because again it keeps things exciting by mixing up the creative process. We are about to do 4 days in the studio this week actually. We have a 3 original singles and a remix coming out over the next 3 months. The TA project is something we will always do when we have the time but both Giles and I have lots of other things going on so time in the studio isnt always so easy to find.
CM>>>How will you represent the “Chapters” album. Any plans for a tour? And if it takes place how will you perform as a musician or a DJ?
Martin>>>I am about to start a world tour going to Australia and New Zealand, Hong Kong, China and Japan, South America, East and Western Europe and Russia performing live shows and DJing. I have made a live show that is using elements from the album and EP tracks plus some of the remixes I have done but I have rework all of the materials for the show so nothing sound exactly as it did before.
CM>>>I am not sure but I’ve read that you are a origin from London, who lives half of the year in Berlin and half of the year in Brazil?
Martin>>>Basically I moved Berlin recently after spending over 10 years in London. I do spend a lot of time in Brazil and have a lot of friends there. Spending so much time abroad and paying London rent just doesn’t make sense hence the move. That said even though originally I came to save rent money Berlin is an amazing city and it is very nice to be living somewhere new.
CM>>>But isn’t this a great antagonism –Germany and Brazil? Or is this the perfect merge of lifestyles sleepless Berlin and laid-back Brazil…? And I really ask myself – and please don’t understand me wrong I love my country – isn’t it strange for an Englishmen to live in bourgeois and corny Germany?
Martin>>>I think Berlin as with London is not a true reflectance of what the rest of that city's country is like. Berlin is a melting pot of creativity and I have already met so many amazing people. I cant say I know what the rest of Germany is really like but I think it is very important to put yourself in new situations and keep mixing things up. It’s too easy to become set in your ways if you stay in the same place for too long. Why I ended up in Berlin was just a series of events I could never have planned but I am here now and love it very much. As for Brazil... some of my best gigs have been there. I absolutely love it there. The food, the sociable nature and friendliness and the parties all make Brazil a very unique place to be.
CM>>>What do you love most besides music?
Martin>>>Films, art, food, snowboarding, spending time with my good friends, meeting new people and my newest goal is to learn kite surfing.
CM>>>What do you need for a perfect day in your life?
Martin>>>To feel creative and using that creativity to achieve something. If that happens I am a happy man.
Photos by permisson of King Roc
Interview Michael Mück
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