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Kevin Martin is one of music’s true extremists. Whether it is during his early days with thrashing jazzcore outfit God, his time with 90s industrial hip-hop troupe Techno Animal or through his violent ragga-fired solo output as The Bug, the maverick talent has always pushed the sonic experience to its furthest limits – following the fire in his heart rather than the transient fads that go on around him.
While noticeably more zoned-out than his previous work, Martin’s King Midas Sound project with London/Trinidadian poet Roger Robinson and Dobbeki Q’s Hitomi was no different – and no less intense. Offering an overwhelming reinterpretation of doom-laden dub and melancholy reggae (or ‘cavernous dub, smack hop, dancehall shoegazing, no wave blues and slo-fi soul’ as the band describe themselves), the band’s debut album ‘Waiting For You’ in 2009 was largely recognised as that year’s dub-influenced masterpiece and topped many a critic’s end-of-year lists.
As Martin gets ready to soak the Bloc faithful in intense dub dread with the King Midas Sound live show, we caught up to chat with him about the genesis of the project, dream vocalists, soundclash epiphanies and what’s next for him, The Bug and King Midas Sound itself…
How did the idea of King Midas Sound first come about?
I guess originally you could trace it back to my friendship with Roger [Robinson] the singer, who I’d worked with in a previous life in a group called Techno Animal. At that time, Roger did a single and some live shows with us – he was heavily involved with an avant-garde poetry slam scene in London. I was always really intrigued by his lyrics and his tone. He had devastating tone, even just talking to him was hypnotic in itself. Then around 2002, I invited him to participate on the first Bug album proper, which was called ‘Pressure’. He got dissed a lot in the reviews for that, because everyone headed straight to the really violent, in your face, aggressive tracks. I thought it was pretty shit that the tracks I did with him got singled out just because they were different – zoned out, poetry tracks. It pissed me off.
I contacted him again while I was writing the second Bug album and he came in and played me some stuff he’d been working. I was aware that he’d been doing some solo stuff but what I hadn’t been aware of was that he’d discovered this whole range of vocal – he’d suddenly gone up an octave and sang in this unearthly, androgynous falsetto and I loved it straight away. It coincided with a time where I was getting pissed off that a lot of people were pigeon holing me as just doing this violent ragga. We just talked a lot about writing this sort of, I guess, modern update of lover’s rock. I was always a big reggae fan and he’d heard lots of that stuff when he was growing up in the Caribbean as well… I just wanted to make an album with him that was totally zoned out – the sort of album that you’d listen to after the club, after the devastation and just hang loose with your girl.
The King Midas Sound project did seem to offer a different direction, or at least mood, from a lot of your previous material…?
I wanted to challenge myself. I wanted to find a new sonic vocabulary for what I was doing. I wanted to try to make music that was sensual and beautiful, basically. Not just about upfront aggression or fucked up atonality. I started addressing melodies more, which sounds strange coming from a musician, but for most of my career I have been turning my back on melodies and hating songs and conventional song structures. For me Midas was really a way of me tackling conventional sound structures and trying to mix lush melodies with quite dark atmospheres.
How did the Hyperdub hook up come about?
I always had this hunch that Steve [Kode9] would like it. On ‘Waiting For You’ there’s a predominant feeling of loss, both on the micro-scale of disbanding and the feeling of isolation, but also from that we wanted to extrapolate and expand that feeling on a macro level – as on a world scale there seems to be this sense of global melancholy and dread. And I knew that Steve, through his work with Space Ape, was into that sort of mood and atmosphere. So after we’d done a couple of tracks, I called up Steve and told him about them and he fuckin loved them.
Have you know him a while then…?
Steve and I had been friends for a few years. I helped give him the idea to start Hyperdub and introduced him to a distributor that I had worked with. When I first met him, a few years before King Midas Sound, we got on like a house on fire and realised that we had very similar tastes.
In one sense, the nostalgic textures of King Midas Sound and the ‘Waiting For You’ LP seem an anomaly against Hyperdub’s relentlessly future fixated, electronic output?
What I like about Hyperdub as a label is that it has this sort of schizoid duality. It’s very much involved with very dancefloor, futuristic moves. At the same time there seems to be this underlying series of albums that are just fuckin’ miserable – and I think we fitted in just fine with that.
The thing about Hyperdub, King Midas Sound and the thing about me personally is freedom of movement, freedom of choice – always go forwards. It’s a case of stretching the parameters.
You’ve worked with some incredibly powerful vocalists in your career – not least Warrior Queen who featured on The Bug classic ‘Poison Dart’ (among many others). Who would be your dream vocalist?
Erykah Badu in an instant. She’s incredible – lyrically, conceptually and she’s got an amazingly melodic voice. I was always a huge Billie Halliday fan and she’s got that same sense of yearning in her tone. I go for tone and texture and emotion… and original voices that I can recognise in one syllable.
I hate the middle ground in vocalists. I tend to go for extremes of vocals. Either insanely aggressively or insanely subtle. Singers, like musicians, should have a fire in their belly and a reason to make music. Someone like Eryka Badu may be superficially mainstream and melodic, but actually I think she’s a hardcore motherfucker – she’s taken a lot of risks with her career that other people in her position wouldn’t do.
But there’s always vocalists that I want to work with. For years, I tried to work with Roots Manuva and it’s only recently that I was able to finally get that together – he was great to work with and great to hang with. Dizzee Rascal I wanted to work with for years as The Bug. It never happened and I think that’s way out my league now. I’m always on the look out for new vocalists.
What’s next for King Midas Sound?
At the moment for King Midas Sound we’re working on a remix album. As well as going for the obvious and getting people to remix the tracks, we’re also getting vocalists to re-voice some of the rhythms. It’ll be released in May and features remixes from Gang Gang Dance, Mala, Nite Jewel, Kode9 & Space Ape, Darkstar, Hype Williams, Echospace, Raf G. On the vocal side, we’ve just asked people that we rate to revoice the rhythms – Like Gonjasufi who we became really good mates with through meeting on tour. Dbridge is another one, his voice is unbelievable.
I was reading online about your first experience of soundsystem culture when you saw The Disciples and the Iration Steppas in London. It sounded like a full on epiphany moment…
That’s what it was, that’s exactly what it was. I went to a show in a warehouse in the East End of London not knowing what the fuck a soundclash was but knowing that I was heavily into dub… then ended up having my head blow apart by this literal sound war between two opposing sound crews, who were basically just trying to crush each other to bits with the most out there dub I had ever heard. There was a real physicality to the sound and the system they were using. There was no light show, there were no stages, I think there was just a light bulb above each system and the crowd was stuck in the middle – sandwiched between these humungously loud bass bins.
It scarred me really, in an amazing way. It reminded me of seeing a group called Swans when I was about 15, who were really an absolute exhaust on your body – more than just being a listening experience you would feel exhausted by the sheer weight of sound afterwards. I generally like music that leaves an impression like that. There’s so much mediocrity out there that it’s really important that you discover your own voice and do something special and out of the ordinary. I’m drawn to mavericks and pioneers in music because they pull music instead of just being lazy or greedy.
What new sounds are you finding most inspiring?
I’m always looking for new shit. I’m not interesting in resting on my laurels. When I started making music it was in my early teens and hearing bands like Joy Division, Public Image Limited, Throbbing Gristle, all post punk stuff that was fierce with the spirit of independence. It was more of a lifestyle choice, it was a philosophy. I was lucky enough to come through that era of music when it was all about finding out the most intense listening experiences. It was all about people that were turning music upside down, inside out, back to front.
If you ask me about what stuff that I am listening to now that I find equally extraordinary then a lot of the juke stuff that is coming out of Chicago at the moment is fuckin insane – I love it. It had the same impact on me as when I first heard jungle – always craving that future shock that you get with new music. There is a sort of rule that 95% of music is shit and 5 % of it is hardcore. The recent Hype Williams album I think is amazing, last year I bought the Gonjasufi album, which was amazing. The DJ Nate album I thought was incredible.
You’re playing live at Bloc. How would you describe the King Midas Sound live experience?
Very different to the album, very, very intense and much, much louder than anyone would expect. Someone recently reviewed us at festival in Canada and said it sounded like ‘My Bloody Valentine in dub’ and we thought that was incredible and a sick reaction that we certainly hadn’t thought of. In fact, it started to shape some of the new stuff we were writing because we were starting to feel a bit hemmed in and not particularly at home in dubstep clubs.
We played a festival recently called Supersonic in Birmingham and it was people like the Swans, God Flesh, Moguai, etc, which was great. It was partly me recognising the roots of where I come from but also recognising that there is more to life than just clubs – that there is a freedom of movement with King Midas Sound. It’s become a band. It fits less and less into any given area and it’s amazing to work with Roger and Hitomi – I have massive respect for them as artists.
What’s next?
I’m in the process of doing a remix of a Greensleeves 12”, ‘Bad Man Forward Bad Man Pull Up’, a huge dancehall tune from a few years ago – Flodan is on that. I’ve also just finished a single with Hitomi for Jahtari which is an 8Bit dancehall label run by a guy Disrupt. Now I’m working on a dub album with Adrian Sherwood as The Bug, a 7” with Daddy Freddy as The Bug and the next Bug album proper… it’s hectic man, hectic, but I love it.
- Kevin Martin was dancing on ice with Allan McGrath
