Joel Martin - Red Bull Music Academy

Joel Martin | Red Bull Music Academy https://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/joel-martin-li...
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Joel Martin
Academy: Barcelona 2008
Joel Martin is a DJ with an encyclopedic knowledge, a master of obscure treats in

techno, house, Afro-rock, easy listening and other cosmic goodness. He is also one
half of Quiet Village, alongside Matthew Edwards AKA Radio Slave, a project
grounded in years of record collecting and a love of library music in which he
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creates music that draws from this vast knowledge, pulling in samples and moods
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is only a part of a wider whole, like scars which display the addiction.
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Transcript:
GERD JANSON
I am very pleased to have an avid record collector to my left. He is one half of the
dreamy pop, whatever you want to call it, project Quiet Village, and one of the
worldwide experts on library music. Please give him a very warm welcome, Joel
Martin from London.
JOEL MARTIN
Thank you.
GERD JANSON
So before we start to talk about what library music actually is, and if it is played in a
library or whatever, tell us a little bit about your musical diet.
JOEL MARTIN
At the moment, or growing up?
GERD JANSON
Growing up.
JOEL MARTIN
I suppose I was quite privileged to come from a household that was musically rich.
My parents played music when we were driving along in the car and I was exposed
to music constantly, really. We were always listening to the charts, and back in the
‘70s there was such a great cross-section of pop music – reggae, punk, electronic –
and it was all presented to you every week. It wasn’t like now, where it’s
manufactured pop groups. Great music was a great pop song. So I was exposed to
all these genres without realizing it. Quite early on, probably due to my parents’
tastes, it affected the way I would listen to music. I was very into harmony, I was
really into The Beach Boys and I was really into David Bowie and things like that,
Electric Light Orchestra, purely because that is what I was being played. My mum
told me that she took me to see the Abba movie when I was probably two years old,
and she had to go and grab me from the aisle because I was running and dancing
and singing in the aisle. So music played a big part in my life from day one.
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JOEL MARTIN
Funnily enough, no. But I wouldn’t be quick to say bad things about it. I was
watching [BBC television program] The Culture Show and one of the critics I
particularly like, Mark Kermode, said he found it very difficult to criticize the film
because it was so saccharine and so schmaltzy and lovely. You couldn’t help but be
swept up by it. But then again, I didn’t go and see it.
GERD JANSON
You weren’t only listening to music but also learning an instrument, right?
JOEL MARTIN
I went to a private school, and once you get to a certain age it is pretty standard for
your parents to be sent a letter saying, “We feel your child should learn a musical
instrument. What would you like to learn?” Piano, guitar, drums, whatever. Normally
it’s something like the violin. So I chose the violin. Didn’t particularly want to learn
the violin, but it was the done thing, I suppose. So I learned the violin for maybe five
or six years and I think I got up to grade three – I forget how many grades there are
– but I did pretty well. But I always remember that my violin teacher used to get
very, very angry with me because I was quite lazy so I didn’t read the music, I used
to follow music by ear and I would remember what she had played for me and I
would just copy it. She could see that I wasn’t reading music and used to give me a
clip round the ear. I didn’t particularly like practising. Once I turned 15, and I started
going out with friends and stuff, the violin went down the toilet, as they say. I think I
sold it.
GERD JANSON
So you don’t play the violin today?
JOEL MARTIN
No, I don’t. We had a keyboard, a family keyboard, that was also a trend during the
‘80s. And I would play along with records I liked, play riffs and stuff. I couldn’t play
classically but I could remember a riff and reinterpret it quite quickly.
GERD JANSON
And you mentioned going out? You grew up in London?
JOEL MARTIN
I was born in the center of London, Hammersmith, but I was brought up in Kent
most of my life and that is where I went to school. But I spent a lot of time,
especially at weekends, in the West End of London. I was always going to museums
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GERD JANSON
What were the clubs that you went to? Would you say it was very important to what
you are doing now, having a club history?
JOEL MARTIN
I think so, yes. Obviously, because I was very into music from an early age and I was
someone who chose my own music. Whether I was influenced by older friends from
a younger age, or whether I heard it on the radio, I used to go and pick my music.
Whereas most of my friends at school would just listen to the latest chart music.
Once I got to a certain age, probably about 13, I got out of the realms of pop music
and I discovered hip-hop and that became my obsession. I heard all these fantastic
records and got into labels like Def Jam, which then went totally overground and by
then I wasn’t so interested. Through that I discovered record shops, legendary
record shops in London. I used to save up my pocket money every month and
maybe once or twice a year, I would go up to shops like Groove Records in London
and buy one or two 12”s and an album. And other shops like Tower Records, which
was a legendary shop because it used to have cut-outs.
We don’t really have cut-out culture anymore, it is very collectable, but shops
like Virgin Megastore, which sadly doesn’t exist anymore, and Tower Records, apart
from selling brand new records, there was this abundance of old stock from
American warehouses and English warehouses – sealed original records, which
now go for a lot of money. You would walk into the soul section and you would find
sealed copies of James Brown records, and if you looked a bit deeper, and if you
knew a bit more, you would find records by groups like the Wild Magnolias or
Mandrill and people like that, the sources of samples of hip-hop artists.
You walk up to the jazz section and find original records by people like Bob
James, and I was learning about these people through my love of hip-hop and
buying records like the Ultimate Breaks & Beats, which were a pure history lesson
for me. I learned so much from those records. These were basically records
designed for producers, hip-hop producers, and they contained all the classic break
and beat sources from back in the old days. You would have funk tracks, movie
soundtracks, heavy metal, jazz, all on the same record. You didn’t really understand
it at the beginning and then you got where it was coming from. And eventually,
instead of listening to the one break part of the track, you would listen to the whole
track and realize the music was pretty good. That was a big thing to me and I used
to go out to thrift stores, or charity shops as we call them in England, and buy any
records that looked interesting.
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this crazy world?
JOEL MARTIN
I suppose, it has become a cliché now being a record collector or a crate-digger. I
really don't like that term at all.
GERD JANSON
Why?
JOEL MARTIN
Generally, there aren’t any crates. The guy before was saying he doesn’t like terms
or genres that are just invented, and it is kind of the way it has happened with it. It
is just a lazy way of saying someone who collects records. A bastardized way of
being into music, I think. And the reason I say I am a record collector is that first and
foremost I have a love for music, and I find it very difficult to operate without having
to go and discover new music on a daily basis. Literally it is the air that I breathe.
Unfortunate, I know. I crave looking for new and interesting music that I haven’t
heard before.
GERD JANSON
How can it be that a record collector like you doesn’t have an amp at home?
JOEL MARTIN
Because I spend more time looking for music than thinking about buying a hi- fi. I
get by on listening to CDs, making CDs occasionally, being given CDs, listening to
the radio. I always dream of this one day I’m going to have this amazing hi-fi in a
warehouse space and I’ll finally be able to listen to them. I’ll have all my records
filed properly, because at the moment they are mostly in boxes, and I’ll be able to
enjoy it, in my twilight years or whatever.
GERD JANSON
So you have a house full of records but are waiting to play them.
JOEL MARTIN
Kind of, yeah. It’s quite sad, really.
GERD JANSON
You mentioned hip-hop being a big influence on you. You actually did a compilation
of hip-hop as well.
JOEL MARTIN
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GERD JANSON
He’s also known as Radio Slave.
JOEL MARTIN
He is the famous half, the other half. Back in 2001, we had wanted to start a record
label for a long time and we got involved with a company called Beechwood. I don’t
know if any of you are familiar with a label called Mastercuts? Mastercuts released
the best of hip-hop, the best of jazz-funk, and they released about 30 or 40 records
all compiled by one or two people, the cream of every genre, a primer. If you don’t
know anything about jazz fusion, you go and buy a Mastercuts record and it will
pretty much be all the best tracks.
We got involved with this label and started our own label called Heroes &
Villains, and we were going to put out a whole series of compilations. The first of
which was done. Matt and I conceived the project, and a very good friend of mine
called Mark B, who is an underground London hip-hop producer and is also
someone who inspired me from when I used to go out looking for records, he
compiled an album – pretty much the first album – of disco rap. I don’t know if any
of you are familiar with the rap that came before the likes of the Beastie Boys, Big
Daddy Kane, LL Cool J and all the others, Jay-Z and everyone, but this is stuff that
came out on very small labels back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s and is very funky.
It is kind of like disco, but with a rap – and that music was a big influence on me
when I heard it.
I was a very big fan of disco rap and we came up with the idea of putting a
compilation together of this stuff, because Mark B was on this stuff for many years
when no one cared. And it has since become this very, very collectable genre. The
records can achieve over $1,000 on eBay and people go crazy for it. But it was a
forgotten genre. No one really cared about it at all. And we put this compilation
together and the label basically screwed us. They didn’t do any promotion, they
didn’t sell it into the shops correctly, and I found that in the end they did the worst
thing, which was not releasing it on vinyl. There was this CD that we spent a
fortune making, we got a photographer from New York called Jamel Shabazz, the
guy who did a book called Back In The Day, one of the loveliest people I’ve ever met
in my life. We saw some of his photos and read about an exhibition of his in New
York, read about him in a magazine, I think, and we asked him if he would be
interested in doing the artwork for the album because he was about to release this
book. He had never done a show outside of America before. We invited him to come
and do a show at a gallery in London run by the magazine Dazed & Confused. And
he came over, it was fantastic, we had a great launch party, and we had a CD that
came out on the magazine. He had a show, we did another show with him in
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was very expensive to make and I think I have one copy.
GERD JANSON
What a tragedy. But maybe we could listen to one of the tracks from the
compilation?
JOEL MARTIN
Yeah, just to give you an idea of what disco rap is and how different it is from what
hip-hop is today. This is a track by one of the legends of hip-hop, a guy who is
meant to be the creator of the scratch, a guy called Grand Wizard Theodore and the
Fantastic Five – the Fabulous Five? I am probably completely wrong. Anyway, the
track is called "Can I Get A Soul Clapp" and it came out in 1980.
Grand Wizard Theodore & The Fantastic Five – “Can I Get a Soul Clapp”
(music: Grand Wizard Theodore & The Fantastic Five – “Can I Get a Soul Clapp”)
GERD JANSON
So you get the idea of disco rap. And what came afterwards for you? There is still
quite a long way to go to Quiet Village?
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and that came during a period where he was already making music in South London
because he is slightly older than me. We went to the same school. He actually hated
our school. We were problem kids in different ways and he really rebelled against it,
he was quite confrontational. I didn’t actually know him at school. Matt, as
everyone knows, is also a huge fan of music and comes from a different background
than I do. He came through that electro and hip-hop route and we ended up going
to lots of similar clubs in London, but not knowing each other, and being exposed to
the same kind of stuff without knowing. He was working with another couple of
guys in a studio in South London. He was very into “wild pitch” music, house music
by Chicago producers like DJ Pierre and Roy Davis Jr., and he was also very into
Balearic music, which we both were.
GERD JANSON
Balearic is another, um, smelly term.
JOEL MARTIN
Yeah. It never was, but it is another term that has been completely bastardized.
We’ll come back to that.
GERD JANSON
Does everyone know in here what Balearic music is?
JOEL MARTIN
Balearic music – and I have to be very quick about this – Balearic music,
traditionally, was music that was discovered to be played in the Balearic Islands, on
Ibiza. Well, it was never called Balearic music, that was a term that the English guys
who went over there termed it, and they brought it back to London and created
their own scene. Originally, it was DJs in Ibiza like Alfredo and José [Padilla], who
was the original DJ at the Cafe del Mar. He used to play very chilled out downtempo
music and Alfredo used to play pop records and house records, and lots of different
stuff in between. And Balearic, I suppose, means “anything goes,” with that
Mediterranean summer attitude. But it has changed and has become a specific
sound, synonymous with downtempo music. Music no faster than 110 BPM, quite
hypnotic, quite “white” sounding. That is what it has become.
Anyway, I used to hang out with Matt in the studio during the latter part of him
working and I would play him all of these records I had in my collection. He was
pretty inspired and a lot of the stuff I was playing him was library music. Library
music is basically music that was manufactured… does anybody know what library
music is? For those of you that don’t know, it is basically music that is
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there is music that has already been manufactured for your use. Some of it is
sound-alike stuff, some of it is composed for you, but it is basically a cheap option.
These records were never available for sale in the public sector, so you used to be
able to find these records in thrift stores and car boot sales. People used to throw
them out, put them in skips, you would find them outside offices. Sometimes you
could raid old studios and they would have them.
A lot of the music was absolutely awful. Some of it was incredibly inspiring,
everything from avant-garde jazz to electronics to proto-house to funk, African, you
name it, reggae, every genre. Some of it is incredible. Especially during the ‘60s
and ‘70s, many, many famous musicians who maybe had some spare time and
wanted some extra money would do session work, and they are on some library
records, but anonymously. Jimmy Page, the legendary guitar player from Led
Zeppelin, is one example. So I amassed this big collection in the mid-90s and I
would just pick up 20 at a time, take them round to Matt and play them to him in the
studio and he would normally freak out. We put together about five DATs of music
and were thinking of putting out a series of compilations. This is just before we put
out the disco rap compilation, and in the end we didn’t do anything with it. It was
the beginning of starting to think about what we were into, and label ideas, the
genesis of what became Quiet Village.
GERD JANSON
So before we hear what became Quiet Village, maybe you can play us one of those
horrible library tunes?
JOEL MARTIN
There are so many interesting ones. What can I play you? If I am going to play one, I
am probably going to play you a few because they are generally quite short, but just
to show you how advanced and twisted some of these records can be. This is a
pretty good example, this is on a label from the early ‘70s called Peer International
and the album is called Reggae for Real, but there is no reggae on it at all, as you’ll
hear. Well, there are a couple of reggae tracks on it, but the track I am about to play
you… why it was put on this record I have no idea. I think it might have been
sampled as well, so if there are any spotters out there, you might be able to tell me.
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Nino Nardini – “Frantique”
(music: Nino Nardini – “Frantique”)

So that’s library music.
GERD JANSON
Have you ever seen something on TV that actually used that piece?
JOEL MARTIN
Unfortunately, no. But in England we used to have these schools programs. You’d
normally get taken into the gym in your school and the one TV in the school would
be wheeled out and you’d sit and wait for this program to come on about nature or
wildlife or something like that. And this kind of music, not always as severe as that,
would normally be preceding it. Maybe I can play another example? Some of you
might be familiar with a producer called Jay Dee, a prolific hip-hop producer? If I’m
correct, track three on this should be one of his best, which is called “Fuck the
Police.” I’m going to play you some of this and then I’m going to play you what he
sampled, which is a library record.
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J Dilla – “Fuck the Police”
(music: J Dilla – “Fuck the Police”)

So I’m sure you all know that classic, and now we are going to play you what
was the hook for that record, which is by a French library composer called Roger
Roger. It came out on an album from like 1973. It came out on an English library label
called Chappell. They had a deal with a French company, I think they licensed some
music, and Roger Roger [sic] was one of the key composers. He did a lot of
electronic music and this is probably one of his finest. I’m not going to say I was the
first person to discover this record, but I think I was. I don’t know how Jay Dee got
it, but I got it from BBC Elstree [studios] when they were clearing lots of boxes of
records. Pretty good.
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René Costy – “Scrabble”
(music: René Costy – “Scrabble”)

Roger Roger!
GERD JANSON
But how did you discover these things like library music? They were not really sold,
so do you remember the first time you stumbled across one?
JOEL MARTIN
One of the things that became quite a funny pursuit during the mid-1990s, which
was a bit of a funny period for music, especially in England – you had all this great
house music that came out of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, which then became very
watered down. I was always looking for something a lot more underground, and
then certain DJs that I was into at the time, like Andy Weatherall, were going
completely the other way, going against the grain and playing techno, and that
shocked a lot of people and freaked people out. We used to go to clubs like
Sabresonic and listen to him playing this stuff.
At the time, I was spending a lot of time at a shop called Fat Cat, which has also
gone, but they were the purveyors of a lot of this great European and American
techno. And also, they sold old bits of hip-hop and all of the early ambient scene –
which maybe we will come to – which was very inspiring to someone like me.
People like Global Communication [points to Global Communication, AKA Mark
Pritchard, in the audience]. One of my heroes!
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scene, and a friend of mine – he wasn’t a friend at the time, but someone I got
introduced to afterwards – Martin Green, had a club called Smashing and they used
to play famous TV themes and funky easy listening records. He put out this
compilation which is, in my mind, the first and best groovy easy listening
compilation. It is called The Sound Gallery. Long deleted, but on this compilation
there were orchestras making funk tracks and funny men in suits, completely un-
groovy people, making Afro-rock records.
Amongst the tracks you had these things – I was trying to work out what labels
they were on and a lot of them said EMI and what have you, and a lot of them said
KPM. I’d never heard of KPM, and I found out it was a library record label which is
owned by EMI. That’s what the compilation came out on [holds up record sleeve].
They all had these generic sleeves, but on the back there were descriptions of what
the track is. So from this compilation I discovered what this was, and then I
eventually found one and put two and two together. After that I worked out that
there were no shops you could buy this music in, so I thought to myself, “Who is
going to have these things?” Because they would rarely be in shops. And I phoned
up TV companies, every television studio, every hospital radio, I phoned up
everyone. And I managed to get quite a lot of big record collections of library music
from people, either for nothing or just a little bit of money, because they didn’t
realize what they had. I had amassed all these records, took them around to Matt’s
studio, and bit by bit I would play them. That’s how I found the records like the
track Jay Dee sampled and, of course, you would have to go through a lot of rubbish
ones to find jewels in the dust.
GERD JANSON
That is what I meant by obsession earlier on – calling up all those people. You
wanted to play us another thing off that KPM record?
JOEL MARTIN
This just shows you how oddball this whole library thing is, on this record entitled
The Sound Of Pop it says, “This album mirrors the music of the younger generation.
The music is both instrumental and vocal, the lyrics being descriptive of the
opinions and activities of the younger generation.” It is 1967 and there is a track on
it called “L.S.D.”, which is described as being “a bizarre interpretation pertaining to
psychedelic drug hallucination.” So I think you need to hear this one. I hope it’s not
a bad trip for anyone. This, weirdly enough, ended up on an episode of the original
Spiderman cartoon, the late ‘60s animation one. It just shows you where this music
ended up. And as I was saying, this would have been composed and performed by
old-fashioned, staid English guys, probably wearing shirts and ties. They would
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Bill Martin & Phil Coulter – “L.S.D.”
(music: Bill Martin & Phil Coulter – “L.S.D.”)

And that would have been sent out to schools and radios and television
stations. There you go.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
So I’m just curious, how did you [deal with] copyright around this work? Would you
say it’s like producer loops that you can get today that are copyright free and you
can use them in your music? I know that TV and film studios use prefabricated loops
as well to do their scores. I don’t understand exactly how the commercial part of it
works with these companies.
JOEL MARTIN
I’m not quite sure what you mean.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
How did they sell them? Because they weren’t available in shops.
JOEL MARTIN
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back in the really old companies. The company that I work for, and we will come to
this in a minute, started in 1908 and they are called DeWolfe Music. Before, when
people were making films, they would say, “I need 200 feet of action music,” and
they would put it on a spool and reel out 200 feet of action music. And then it
turned into bring pressed on 78s, and then records, CDs and now everything is
digital. But they sent out the records for free. If you are a TV studio and you sign up
to this company, you get all the music for free. If you want to license it, then you
have to pay them and you pay the musicians’ union and you pay the company. But it
works out far cheaper. Like I said before, it is a cheap option. Maybe you’ll pay £300
per track, rather than £3000 or £30,000. It depends on your budget, but that’s
what it’s there for. You end up getting sent all the stuff for free if you’re a legitimate
company. Now you get an access code through a digital website where you can
download everything.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
You played in Stockholm, right? Did you go record shopping? Did you go to
Nostalgia Palace? It is pretty hidden away.
JOEL MARTIN
I think I know the one you mean, I think my friend took me. Is the guy a bit of a freak
and has to look at every record’s price, sweating?
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Well, yeah, but that is like most record store owners that I know.
JOEL MARTIN
Yes, you’re right, you’re right.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
You should check it out anyway because I know it is a goldmine of this kind of music
and sound effects.
JOEL MARTIN
Thank you. So, around this time again, I was working as an assistant film editor. I
worked on quite a few films, some not really well-known, some quite well-known,
like The Beach.
GERD JANSON
Is that actually what you wanted to become in the first place?
JOEL MARTIN
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my hobby and I wanted to get into films. I ended up working on a film as a runner,
and on my travels I got to walk past the editing suite. I ended up falling in love with
it – this was back when everything was being done by hand. It was a proper craft,
you handled the film yourself. It wasn’t just clicking on a mouse, which is what it
became. I fell in love with the smell of the numbering machine and wearing the
white gloves. This is not a sadistic thing… or maybe it is!
I got friendly with the film editor and I went to go and work for an editing house,
which was in a big warehouse space, and in every room you had editors working on
their own film. My job was just to clear up the bins and get them tea and coffee and
stuff like that. But on my travels, that was how you got to meet people, and after
about six months I ended up getting offered a job with an editor, which wasn’t the
best experience because I had a clash of personalities. I was the second assistant
and the first assistant didn’t really get on with me, but that is another story.
GERD JANSON
How can someone not get on with you?
JOEL MARTIN
I think she had personal problems [laughs]. Anyway, so I went to work on this film
and I started getting a few more jobs after that, but it was very difficult to get work.
So many people looking for the same jobs. Then, when everything went online you
needed fewer people because you had a computer. You didn’t need a first assistant,
second assistant, understudy, so everything changed. I left school in 1993. We
weren’t part of the computer generation, we just missed it, and I hated computers
in a big way. I felt very upset that all that changed, and if I’d maybe been slightly
more mature at the age I was, 18 or whatever, and thought things through, maybe I
would have realized that no one else knew how this equipment worked, it was all
brand new, and if I studied it I would get on very quickly. I didn’t, I got very bitter
and frustrated and thought that my chosen career path had been stolen away from
me. And I still clung onto this profession. It was obviously the tail end, you still
needed to go back and work on film at some point in the process if you were going
to show it at the cinema. Now most films are shown on screen digitally, but up until
quite recently you still needed to screen it on a film print.
Anyway, I ended up getting a job when the film work ran out for an advertising
editing company and they edited TV commercials. While working for them – and
this was at the same period where I discovered easy listening and all that rubbish –
they had a small collection of these library records, and one of the first ones that I
saw was by a company called DeWolfe Music. I basically phoned them up on the
blag, so to speak, hoping to get some records from them. I made up this story that
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GERD JANSON
How many feet?
JOEL MARTIN
[Laughs] They gave me records. I struck up a very good friendship with them and I
have known them for over ten years and I now actually work for them. I’m in charge
of putting together their back catalog, all this old weird stuff that was never
released to the general public. That is one of my jobs. At the time, when I went in
and discovered that they had this great library, and it was untouched, that is
basically what I told the boss. He simply replied, “Yes, I know it’s a goldmine.” I got
in touch with a label, or was approached by a label called BBE, Barely Breaking Even
– they have done lots of great compilations and artist albums. They did an album
with Jay Dee, they did one with Pete Rock, they have done soul, funk, disco, house
compilations with most of the big producers, and this was back in their early days.
Pete from BBE, he got in touch with me and said, “There is a friend of mine called
Mark B who might like to do this library compilation.” That is when I was introduced
to Mark and we struck up a friendship quickly.
We went on to go through their archive and both looked up some records and
ended up releasing a record with BBE called Bite Hard, which did very well and
ended up being sampled by everyone from Jay-Z to Fat Joe, everyone, literally. And
the tracks once ended up on a motor racing documentary with James Hunt, I
remember every track was on that. It has been very well-received. And that was
back in 1997, I think. We’re just about to release volume two in January. It’s their
centenary next year and they’ve got some really amazing stuff from the archive to
come out. Whether it be film soundtracks that never were issued or interesting jazz
or just oddball music, music from Monty Python’s Flying Circus, all that music is
owned by them, the music from Dawn of the Dead, the zombie film, all of that stuff
is them.
GERD JANSON
You also had something to do with Dawn of the Dead quite recently.
JOEL MARTIN
A few years ago, one of my ideas when I was going through all this music at
DeWolfe, I came across some of the music I recognized from the [Oscar] Romero
film Dawn of the Dead, which I was a very big fan of.
GERD JANSON
Everyone knows that one, right?
17 de 23 05/06/2021 05:52
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film is just loaded with music, absolutely crammed, 70 bits of music on there. So I
didn’t know where it was. And when I went to go through this music at DeWolfe, the
LPs, I suddenly recognised one of these tracks and I couldn’t believe it. It was a pet
project of mine to go through all the records and work out what all the cues were. I
eventually did and released an album on a friend’s label [Trunk Records] a few years
back, in 2005, and it was Dawn of the Dead: The Unreleased Music. We’re going to
do another follow-up because we only put out a few acts and there are some more
key tracks for real hardcore zombie fans.
GERD JANSON
Shall we hear one of the scary pieces?
JOEL MARTIN
This sounds like Goblin. I actually thought it was Goblin when I heard it, so it was
quite surprising to find out that it is by an English composer called Simon Park. It is
called “Motives 1.” There is a “Motives 2,” they are both quite similar.
Simon Park – “Motives 1”
(music: Simon Park – “Motives 1”)
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JOEL MARTIN
I’m pretty sure it is from some weird Italian-only cut. It is not on the regular one, so I
can’t pinpoint it, I’m sorry.
GERD JANSON
Before we join the dots now with Quiet Village, you said there is another influential
piece for the work you did with Quiet Village, more of a house track?
JOEL MARTIN
There are quite a few, actually. Maybe we can play a couple of them. Let’s play a
track. I am wondering what order we should do this in. Matt and I were both big
fans of the New York and New Jersey house sound from the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.
In particular a small label called Nu Groove, and there were some incredible and
talented producers on that label. People like Joey Beltram, Rheji and Ronnie Burrell
and Bobby Konders. Bobby Konders has made some very inspiring records, very
dub-based house music, quite lo-fi sounding. He worked with a keyboard player,
Peter Daou, who is incredibly talented. And these people are kind of ancient history.
I’m unsure if they [still] make music. Bobby Konders went on to have a very
successful label putting out dancehall…
GERD JANSON
He is running a label called Massive B. He is still making, I guess, bashment or
dancehall. He is making reggae and is doing quite well and has a Sunday radio show
on Hot 97 in New York, I believe.
JOEL MARTIN
His music was so inspiring to me and Matt and friends of mine, just because it came
from a different place and time. It wasn’t conventional club music, it was very
spacey, very spiritual, very edgy, proper night-time music. You can play it in the
early hours. Again, he obviously brought the love of reggae to it and it is very
influenced by dub. This is one of the best tracks that he ever produced and it came
out on one of the early releases on the label Massive B. It is him under the name
Dub Poets and it is called “Black & White,” probably from 1991.
19 de 23 05/06/2021 05:52
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Dub Poets – “Black & White”
(music: Dub Poets – “Black & White”)

That goes on for another ten minutes but we want to cram in as much as we
can. Music from a different age, really. That music wasn’t commercial at all. It was
very underground, not many DJs played it. American guys like Tony Humphries, and
I don’t know if you know much about these people, they used to play that kind of
stuff, but it wasn’t particularly stuff that was played on the radio. It was small little
labels releasing these kind of ambient house records and that was a special time
for that kind of music.
GERD JANSON
So was there a place in London where you could actually hear this?
JOEL MARTIN
Not really, no. Maybe at Ministry [of Sound] sometimes but I was too young to get
in, over-21s only.
GERD JANSON
And you said this was pretty influential on Quiet Village, so maybe we should hear
something from Quiet Village in a second. You could talk about how it appeared
first. It was on a label called Whatever We Want, from New York?
JOEL MARTIN
20 de 23 05/06/2021 05:52
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other people, and it had been fun in part, but it can be quite stressful in the studio
working in a small space with someone. You need the other person to have a certain
temperament and I had been feeling I needed to work with someone who has quite
an easy and mellow experience. I suppose I didn’t really want to bother Matt
because he was working quite a lot and getting a good name for himself, and I was
more of a music fan, really.
Eventually, through wanting to do these compilations we started this label
called Consume Music and we literally just made some mix CDs, expecting to give
them to friends. One day we were sitting in the studio and I came across a few
records that I thought might be fun to sample. He had some free time in the studio
and we decided to try and work together and it was a really pleasurable experience
and we kind of continued. The first record that we did we took to a friend of ours in
New York, who had just started a record label called Whatever We Want Records,
which was primarily an output for DJ Harvey’s project called Map Of Africa. I played
it to my friend with no intention of him putting the record out and after about five
seconds he said, “I’m going to release this record.” And I said, “No, you’re joking,
you don’t have to say that.” And he said, “No, I’m putting it out. What else have you
got?” So we were pretty chuffed and we ended up with three records with him on
the label. He had this idea of a trilogy and the first record that we did had a track on
it called “Pillow Talk”. Maybe we should play that.
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Quiet Village – “Pillow Talk”
(music: Quiet Village – “Pillow Talk”)
GERD JANSON
Mr. Joel Martin, thank you very much for being here.
JOEL MARTIN
Thanks very much!
On a different note
22 de 23 05/06/2021 05:52
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Matt Edwards (Radio Slave) Life Is A Donut: Reassessing

→ A multifaceted producer J Dilla’s Legacy
talks remixes and talent
spotting
23 de 23 05/06/2021 05:52

Joel Martin - Red Bull Music Academy

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Joel Martin | Red Bull Music Academy https://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/joel-martin-li...

Academy: Barcelona 2008

Joel Martin is a DJ with an encyclopedic knowledge, a master of obscure treats in

this crazy world?

was very expensive to make and I think I have one copy.

Nino Nardini – “Frantique”

(music: Nino Nardini – “Frantique”)

J Dilla – “Fuck the Police”

(music: J Dilla – “Fuck the Police”)

René Costy – “Scrabble”

(music: René Costy – “Scrabble”)

Bill Martin & Phil Coulter – “L.S.D.”

(music: Bill Martin & Phil Coulter – “L.S.D.”)

Simon Park – “Motives 1”

(music: Simon Park – “Motives 1”)

Dub Poets – “Black & White”

(music: Dub Poets – “Black & White”)

Quiet Village – “Pillow Talk”

(music: Quiet Village – “Pillow Talk”)

Matt Edwards (Radio Slave) Life Is A Donut: Reassessing

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