This month sees the release of the 50th edition in Fabric’s esteemed mix series. The series has hitherto been fairly unwavering in its commitment to repping “pure” house and techno, but Fabric 50, helmed by Martyn, is a more varied and frankly riskier affair.

While productions from Ben Klock, Levon Vincent and Redshape all make an appearance, there’s also broken beat from Altered Natives, dubstep from Zomby and Kode9, UK funky from Roska and Altered Natives. Martyn hasn’t adapted his sound for the sake of the mix, but rather sought to represent the full breadth of what he does and to expose the links that exist between genres that traditionalists insist on keeping separate.

It’s no surprise that Fabric have granted Martyn the freedom to mess with their tried and tested formula. He’s proved to be one of the most on-it DJs of the past two years, capable of juggling styles and thriving in a range of environments, from Glasgow’s Numbers to Berlin’s techno mecca Berghain. Based in Washington, DC, he’s managed to avoid getting caught up and weighed down by any localised scenes, and his productions too have resisted easy categorisation. Following a run of exceptional singles and his reputation-making remix of TRG’s ‘Broken Heart’, Martyn last year released Great Lengths, his debut artist album, and more recently has remixed the likes of Fever Ray and Detachments to greatly convincing effect. With the Fabric mix in shops this week, and with artist album no.2 due in mid-2010, FACT spoke to the Dutchman shortly before Christmas to find out how it all came to pass.

Tell me a bit about your origins in club music. You got into house and techno first, right?

“Yeah. Well, I did high school and then I studied Dutch literature and communication in the south of Holland, in Eindhoven. That’s where I grew up and that’s where most of the clubs that I went to were. I guess I started clubbing quite early, but it was mostly about bands, way back in the day. I saw my first band play live when I was 13, I bought lots of records and slowly but surely got into house and techno. In Eindhoven there were a couple of after-hours places.

“Because Einhoven is right between Amsterdam in the north and then Brussels and Antwerp and Ghent in the south, it was just a really nice place for techno – because a lot of the Detroit people lived in those cities at that time and they played a lot, especially after-hours, you know, they had a gig in Brussels or something and then drove to Eindhoven and played a gig from 6-9 in the morning or something like that.

“So I saw a lot of people play around that time, people like Carl Craig and Stacey Pullen and Derrick May, and a lot of the older Dutch and Belgian DJs that were strongly influenced by Detroit techno. That really influenced me I guess – at the time I didn’t pay that much attention but after a while I started exploring it more and buying the records, so that’s kind of where I had my roots, you know?”

“I saw a lot of people like Carl Craig and Stacey Pullen and Derrick May, and a lot of the older Dutch and Belgian DJs that were strongly influenced by Detroit techno. That really influenced me…”

Was it hard for you to get hold of releases from Detroit in Eindhoven at that time?

“It was actually fairly easy. Also Eindhoven had two big techno labels – one was called Eevo Lut and the other one was called Djax. Djax used to put out a lot of Chicago stuff like Mike Dunn, Armando and a lot of early acid house things, and Eevo Lut was also Terrace’s label but they also had a Carl Craig release, for instance, and people like 2000 And One – so yeah man, there was a lot going on back then for such a small city.”

It seems that Holland – whether Eindhoven, The Hague, Rotterdam or wherever – has always had a special relationship with techno. Why do you think this is?

“Well, it wasn’t only Holland! Look at Manchester for instance, they have a big link with that music as well. I think what happened was that basically old cities, kind of hollowed-out cities, took to that sound. Detroit was the main example of a hollowed-out city, where basically everything that was important to that city disappeared with the whole automotive industry and this whole city – all the white people basically left and all the black people stayed, and made it into a kind of ghost city. Obviously you’ve probably read a lot about Detroit as well, I don’t have to repeat the whole story…”

“Anyway, I think that a lot of young people in other cities at the time could really recognise and relate to this feeling and this sound that accompanies it, you know? Specifically when it comes to Eindhoven, it’s a very technological city, because you have this big electronics giant called Philips, they originated in Eindhoven and basically everyone in Eindhoven knows someone who has worked for Philips or has worked for Philips themselves. It’s so linked with the rest of the city, and obviously if you look at Detroit it has exactly the same thing but on a much bigger scale. I think young people could kind of understand where the early Detroit people were coming from…

“It’s a bit of a on-the-fly theory, but there you go…”

“There was a lot going on back then for such a small city.”

I know drum ‘n bass was subsequently a big part of your life. Were you into the hardcore and early jungle stuff, or was it later on that you got into it?

“I first went to listen to people like Grooverider and Randall – that was around ‘94-’95, so quite late, and I missed the whole hardcore period. Much, much later, in the early 2000s, I was talking to this guy in Rotterdam – where I lived for a while – and he said that in the early, early 90s, around 1991-92, people like Kenny Ken, Nicky Blackmarket, people like that, they were all playing in Rotterdam – and they were actually playing alongside people like Darkrave and Gizmo, people who back then were on the forefront of what now is called gabba. So these early hardcore types, they were in Holland, just not in Eindoven, only in Rotterdam and the occasional squat around Amsterdam. They were actually co-founders of gabba music without really knowing it!”

Is Eindhoven a gabba stronghold now?

‘No, no, no [laughs]. Eindhoven is a very laidback kind of place.”

So where are the gabba strongholds?

“Rotterdam, The Hague, Amsterdam, in that order. And that’s typical because that’s also where the most notorious football hooligans are, in that order. [laughs].”

Are you a PSV [Eindhoven football club] man?

“Yeah, I grew up in a little village near Eindhoven, so yeah, I’m a PSV man. You could compare Eindhoven to Bristol, it actually looks a little bit like it. And the relationship between Bristol and London is a bit like that between Eindhoven and Amsterdam. For the outside world, a lot of stuff happens in Amsterdam, but if you’re a Dutchman it doesn’t really happen in Amsterdam, it happens in Eindhoven.”

This entry was posted on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 9:06 am and is filed under Features, Interviews and tagged with Fabric, Martyn. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.