Funkadelphia: "Where are you originally from?"

MartyParty: "I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1970, and I immigrated to the States in 1994. I came in through my computer science background and got a job at Oracle in Silicon Valley- worked in IT for fifteen years through the whole dot-com thing. Then started doing computer music in 2005, and changed my career in 2006, pretty much."

 

 

Funkadelphia: "Who have been some influential artists on you musically,

even if it's outside of your obvious spectrum?"

MartyParty: "The single biggest influence in me always wanting to make my type of electronic music was pretty much the house music scene in San Francisco when I was living there. It was basically like vinyl records and typical house, so just a long, steady beat. There are always pretty melodies and cool basslines, but I always felt like the beat was the most important thing- the drums. I always wanted more melodies; and breaks in the music; and more dramatic and emotional drops- I just never heard it. When I started doing computer music, that was my goal:  to basically introduce more flavor into the house music I was hearing. That’s how it started.
I was also, obviously, a big fan of hip-hop; so, I started making instrumental hip-hop- that’s the first thing I did. ‘Cause I can’t rap- I have a terrible rapping voice. So I just learned how to sing with synthesizers pretty much. It started with PANTyRAiD, “The Sauce”; that was the first thing that I ever wrote.
And then, I started my own MartyParty career and started experimenting with actual ‘purple’ music, which is just electronic beats with tons of melodies and poly-melodic influence and harmonies."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Funkadelphia: "So Primal Intent is an entirely new project for you?"

MartyParty: "Yeah, it's a new project. I was going to do it as an album, but it's so different- and the show will be so different- that it deserves its own brand. So, it's going to be the debut album for the Primal Intent project."

 

 

Funkadelphia: "What are you doing differently with Primal Intent

than with MartyParty or your other side projects?"

MartyParty: "When I moved out to Miami, I didn’t really know anybody. So when I started playing there, one of the first people I became friends with was Paul Gorman. He was nineteen at that point. He’s just this young kid that’s really good at Ableton; he’s super psychedelic like I am. He has a lot of technical knowledge about making minimal beats from scratch in a synthesizer without samples. He basically just taught me, and we worked together on making, you know, songs with a minimal arc. There’s what a Primal Intent is: minimal European-engineering, with more of a songwriting take on it, instead of just elements of an imminent track.
Typical MartyParty, I kind of make like an introduction, a theme, a build-up, a chorus, a bridge, a thickened introduction, and then some kind of climatic ending, and then an outro. That’s just like my holster.
So it’s the MartyParty influence into the minimal techno vibe. It has moments of pure techno, pure house; it has moments of trance; it has moments of hip-hop; it has moments of trap; it has moments of dubstep. It’s all in there- and everything’s made one hundred percent scratch in Ableton Live. It has a super psychedelic psy-trance vibe to it."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Funkadelphia: "When you first start working on a new song, do you know

which project you're intending the song to be a release for, or do you

determine what project name to release it under after completion?"

MartyParty: "My studio is just a room in my house. I spend a lot of time at home- I’m either on the road or at home. I just go in and out of my studio for a few hours- sometimes ten hours, sometimes one hour.
Anything that feels good, I always try to start a song with a theme. If there’s a tour coming up, and I have shows; then, I think about the shows, and I think about what I want the people to walk away from the shows having heard. So I just make a couple tracks for the bit. I’m always just making songs for my MartyParty bit.
Sometimes, I’m making songs with another project in mind. But generally, I just start songs MartyParty; and if they have a certain sound, like a PANTyRAiD sound, I’ll send them to Josh [Ooah] and see if he likes them."

 

 

Funkadelphia: "What work are your currently doing with your other projects?"

MartyParty: "I’m working on another PANTyRAiD album with Josh. We’ve made three songs- so we have about another eight stitches we’re working on. That’ll be coming out around the end of the year, and we’ll be touring off that again.
Then MartyParty, I’ve got a six track EP, which I’m going to be playing in my tour coming up, starting next week.
It’s basically just working on three tracks, and then I’ll be releasing them all at the end of the year."

 

 

Funkadelphia: "Is there any chance we might see the return of DeathStar,

your collaborative project with Minnesota?"

MartyParty: "I’m sure we will at some point, one way or another. Christian [Minnesota] has a great career as a solo artist, so we have just never felt the need to complicate life with touring. We’ve had offers, but we’ve always turned them down.
We will eventually connect again, it’s just a matter of time. But there’s no rush."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Funkadelphia: "So you're clearly constantly working with other artists- are there any artists out there who you haven't yet collaborated with but would like to?"

MartyParty: "In every style I have my favorite producers- they’re always between like seventeen and nineteen years old. I love this kid BLVCK out of Holland, out of Amsterdam. He’s making trap music with a European flavor and it’s super engineered and really thick.
In the house music scene there’s a couple producers I follow. I’m not really following any dubstep or any trap anymore. I’m a huge Antiserum fan, but I’ve kind of drifted away from hearing too much about that. I’m more interested now in a whole, revolutionary, new sound. So I’m looking for people who are doing things with a very minimal nature, making the most out of each sound, and, you know, trying to create an atmosphere instead of just going for the pure shock value that sort of exists with dubstep and trap. I like following a sound that creates an atmosphere and environment within.
I listen to reggae a lot, I listen to ambient music, and I listen to a lot of minimal European techno. That’s totally different from what I listen to in my car, like the hip-hop, and the trap, and the dubstep. I’m completely getting away from that and getting into something entirely different."

 

 

Funkadelphia: "Are you going to do any Primal Intent touring?"

MartyParty: "Definitely. I’m continuously booking MartyParty gigs. There’s ton of interest in MartyParty right now, so, you know, I’ve worked six years to get to this point with MartyParty, and I enjoy that.
But if Primal Intent gets any attention and there are requests for shows, I would love to see Primal Intent be a big touring act eventually. But, with music, it takes a long time. You’ve got to have a lot of patience. If you put out music under a new project, you’ve got to expect five or six years before they get any attention.
With MartyParty and PANTyRAiD it’s business as usual. Obviously, [as] MartyParty, I play music from all tracks from all the other projects- you get all the music. It’s a cross of every genre, and it’s always experimental. Then, probably in the next few years we’ll probably see Primal Intent, and then there’ll be three projects touring."