WMC interview: The Martinez Brothers

WMC interview: The Martinez Brothers

27 March, 2009 | 4.49PM

• Written by: Terry Church
• Filed under: Music News: the martinez brothers, wmc 2009

At 17 and 20 years-old respectively, Chris and Steve Martinez are one of the most talked about duos in dance music circles.

Even the New York Times got in on the action and proclaimed The Martinez Brothers as the saviours of New York’s house scene.

US deep house god Dennis Ferrer has taken them under his Objektivity wing and given them a series of releases on his high profile label.

It’s about high time we caught up with The Martinez Brothers to find out if the hype is well deserved so I met the brothers a few minutes ago for a quick interview in Miami.

Is your father with you today?

Yeah, he’s here. He introduced us into house, so he’s really the person who got us into house music.

But Dennis Ferrer has been instrumental in our success - he gave us our first club gig and as far as production goes, hes been a teacher to us. He also set us up with the right manager.

How are you finding fame? All the photos and autographs? [at the Beatport Pool Party, there was a photo request every 2 minutes]

We’re not overwhelmed by the attention because we’re having fun.

But it sucks for me [Chris], because I still go to school. Like after WMC, I get back on Sunday night and I have to get up on Monday morning at 6am for school.

It’s like two different worlds, but sometimes the two worlds do collide. The other day I went to the computer lab and the person who had last used the computer I jumped on was on our Myspace.

The teachers however don’t care too much for what we’re doing.

Although after we had that piece in the New York Times, their attitude changed a little. I was sitting in my Earth Science class a few days after the article came out, and the teacher was staring at me.

I said to her, “What are you looking at?” and she replied, “Are you a DJ?” And I said, “Yes” and she was very supportive and said she was impressed. But she doesn’t give me any slack for handing in homework late or anything like that.

Why not jack in school and just do music full time?

School is essential. There are so many DJs who come and go, but we want to have the background. We want to know what we’re doing from a business sense and you need education to really excel at that.

We definitely want to do this for the rest of our lives. None of this was planned, like we met Dennis Ferrer by coincidence and we never really reached out to people.

We never imagined we would be playing the main stage of the Beatport Pool Party. Never. Ever.

I heard that you two used to play in a church band. Is church still important to you two?

We came from church music - we used to lead the local church band. Drinking and partying never caught our attention, drinking never interested us. We just like the music. It’s not the party for us, it’s the music.

We try to incorporate all styles of music into our sets, and we do live remixes by layering and looping beats and throwing accapellas and vocals over the top.

In our DJ sets, we try to play soulful sometimes and techno at other times. Ricardo and Luciano inspire us, but so does Louie Vega.

Our style is a mixture of everything.

Some have suggested you guys are just a gimmick, but there’s much talent behind the fact you’re so young.

At the beginning, on forums and stuff, we were just being called gimmicks, but we do what we do and I think we’ve shown people what we’re capable of.

You know, we’ve got a lot of kids our own age into house music and that’s really important to us. There are kids who come up to us and say “we’re really into your music”. We have 16 and 17 year olds sneaking into clubs to see us play.

We want to introduce our friends to the music, and sometimes they see YouTube clips of our gigs, and want to come and see us play.

But we’re not the only ones flying the flag for young people. James Zabiela, Deadmau5 - they are still young too.

How did you two end up in production?

We’ve been musicians for years. We were the leaders of the church band really. The music aspect has always been a part of our lives from the beginning.

But the equipment and studio stuff we were introduced later by Dennis Ferrer. He helped us with all the gear and technology.

Plus Steve went to Berlin two or three times, and he got inspired by the sounds there. For instance he met Argy there, and we have a new track coming out with him called ‘Who Made Who?”

What’s next for you two?

We have a compilation with Strictly Rhythm coming in June, and we’ll be making more music.

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• Check out the Martinez Brothers on Beatport