Martyn announces new album for Ostgut Ton, Voids

The nine-track LP is inspired by a recent near-death experience.

Martyn is releasing his next album on Ostgut Ton on June 22. Titled Voids, the nine-track album is his first for the Berghain-affiliated label and was written after the Dutch-born producer narrowly avoided death due to a heart attack.

“Over the past year, the Dutch-born, Washington D.C.-based producer has undergone a metamorphosis – one that began with a medical emergency and has dovetailed into personal musical transformation,” the label says.

“Voids is a personal reassessment of the elements that drove Martyn to make music in the first place: sampling, unpredictability, melancholy, sci-fi, polyrhythms, textures, ecstatic moments, Detroit, interlocking percussion and bass.”

The spark of inspiration for writing the album came when Martyn listened to Max Roach’s 1979 ensemble percussion album M’Boom – the first he listened to in his studio after leaving hospital. “I could hear so much space in the music, something I had never noticed before; almost like a 3D experience, with the most striking aspect being the emptiness between the players,” he says in a press release.

Voids is Martyn’s first studio album since 2014’s The Air Between Words on Ninja Tune, though he last year released GL Outtakes, a collection of reworked tracks from his Great Lengths album in 2009. Listen to a preview of one of the tracks below.