Kevin Richard Martin has built a career around the undefinable. His early work, alongside Justin Broadrick, saw him delve into the avant-garde in both GOD and Ice, while the industrial and relentless world of hip-hop duo Techno Animal (now rebirthed as Zonal) paved the way for his dub-infused, guest-heavy work as The Bug. Martin’s catalog, spanning more than three decades and presented through a multitude of aliases, is nothing short of boundary-pushing, relentlessly dismantling artistic conformity and forging a unique, ever-evolving language of sound in the process.
Since the COVID lockdowns, which led him to rethink his approach to recording and releasing music, Martin has embarked on a strikingly prolific run of releases, under both The Bug and his given name, embracing new creative avenues, including a meditative collaboration with Joseph Kamaru (KMRU) on Disconnection and the recent signing to Relapse Records. Following the release of MACHINE, his first ever instrumental album as The Bug, and before the world debut of his haunting eulogy to Amy Winehouse, Black, at this year’s edition of Semibreve Festival in Braga, we caught up with Martin to discuss the driving forces behind this new chapter of his career, as well as his evolving approach to the world around him.
First off, congratulations on the release of MACHINE, which was released at the beginning of this month. Not only is it your first instrumental album as The Bug (and a remarkable one at that), but an anthology of sorts. The 21 tracks (narrowed down to 12 on the double album) were originally released as five different EP over the past year and a half on Bandcamp. How did the philosophy behind the MACHINE series come into fruition? It was designed around your PRESSURE label nights, right?
Correct. It's my first solo instrumental album. My first ever album as The Bug was Tapping the Conversation and that wasn't solo, it was with collaborators. I'd had the idea, who knows where it came from, that I would actually start constructing instrumentals literally as weapons for The Bug shows, as a way of giving me ammunition for each party, each show. I'd liked the idea of constructing instrumentals without any compromise for vocalists. Generally, I can hear their voices in my head when I'm working on the tracks and I try to construct the compositions around that, but with these tracks, it was more liberating to just make them with a set plan. The goal was to set a dance floor on fire, one way or another, and just go for music that needn't be in any way compromising to a vocalist finding them too harsh or too heavy. It was a way for me to set the tone of the night at a PRESSURE party and also to try and find a new form of dub music that I wasn't hearing anywhere else. I’m fully aware there was a continuation of the music I've done in the past, naturally, whether it’d be going back to Techno Animal days or what I've been doing consistently as The Bug.
That’s true, a lot of these sounds have shown up on previous works of yours and are once again present on MACHINE. It highlights such an interesting mix of sounds, like an electrifying cocktail of dub, drone, electronic and industrial elements.
You know, genres don't interest me really. It's literally just The Bug music to me, my language, my vocabulary. It's the craft I've been trying to finally hone in all the years I've been making music. The irony for me is as much as I adore reggae, was addicted to hip-hop, love free jazz or noise rock, there's some inability in me to want to become part of a herd mentality and adhere to a formula. The album is sort of anti-formula, but it’s very much in the image I've tried to construct of what I want from music. I'm greedy, really [laughs]. I hear musical forms that I love, but there's things missing which I would want more or less of. It's just about how to manipulate that around until I feel fired up by what's coming out the speaker. The reason behind making these tracks is to get excited, it's about energy. Another problem I have sometimes with a critique of what I do is when people refer to it as dark. I see it as the opposite, actually: full of light and on fire. That's one of the reasons behind the name of the previous album. As far as I'm concerned, it's all about how you can turn up the heat physically and psychologically with music.
The first word that came to mind when listening to MACHINE, other than electrifying, was cyberpunk – the tracks do feel very metallic, if that makes sense. Both the album title and the sounds you explore are somewhat tied to technology.
It's funny, the word “cyberpunk” is a bit cheesy to me [laughs]. I get you though, I know why you're saying it. Since I was a kid, I've been besotted by science fiction, because my mom was obsessed by it. I would sit on a couch next to her watching Star Trek and Doctor Who when I was like a toddler. That memory never left me and then it became and manifested itself in an obsession with a writer like J.G. Ballard. The best science fiction, to me, isn't about space opera or shoot ‘em ups in space with other aliens: it's about the terror of the near future or the complete molecular explosions in your brain at the possibilities of what comes next. I'm a slave to sci-fi, really. [laughs]
I’d even argue a lot of your work, including your recent output, has a cinematic quality to it. You were just speaking about your debut as The Bug and that was heavily inspired by Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (which turns 50 this year). On that note, are there any films you think coexist in the same universe as the tracks on MACHINE?
That's a good question. In the last four years, I've been making a lot of solo albums under my given name and one of those was a reinterpretation of Solaris by Andrei Tarkovski. And also, going back to Techno Animal, for Disc 2 of Re-Entry, we had this idea to construct imaginary soundtracks for films that never existed. And that's what Disc 2 of re-entry was. For a long time, I've been very interested in sound design and cinematography, so you're absolutely correct. There's a very cinematic quality to MACHINE. When I started working on the tracks, I liked the idea of taking the sheer brute force of previous The Bug releases and combining it with some of the atmospheres that I'd used in the Kevin Richard Martin material. It wasn't just sadistic in its heaviness, but it had a depth of sound and an atmospheric pressure, if that makes sense.
The announcement and release of MACHINE coincided with your signing to Relapse Records in August of this year. They’ve already put out your Zonal releases with Justin [Broadrick] and helped reissue both Re-Entry and The Brotherhood of the Bomb from the Techno Animal days. Even with their focus on metal acts, it seemed like a perfect fit – to me, your music feels more at home with Relapse than with the work being released through Ninja Tune. How did that move happen? Are you happy with the change so far?
I agree with you. At this point, I feel much more comfortable on Relapse than I did at the end of my time on Ninja Tune. The guy that signed me to Ninja Tune left his job a couple of years after he signed me. The reason I signed [to Ninja Tune] was Jeff Waye, who now runs a publishing company called Third Side Music in Canada - at the time, he was the head of Ninja Tune America. He came to a meeting with me and the first thing he said was: “I love your stuff, because I love Bounty Killer and Slayer”. In all honesty, I'm not particularly a fan of Slayer [laughs], but he got what I was trying to do at the time - which is a long time ago now - just with that opening statement. Sometimes, meeting record labels can be like meeting business managers and that first sentence he mentioned made me realize we could talk the same language - it was about a passion of music. Over time, Ninja Tune has headed in a very different direction - what they release now is basically pop music. I'm not anti-pop at all, but it became more apparent as time went on that we were going in different directions. I didn't speak the same language as some of the people at the label. When I had the idea originally of making these EPs, I always knew that there would be an album. I didn’t how I was going to do it, but I was pretty sure I would end up cherry picking the best tracks and I knew it would be a five EP series. And there had been such a positive communication with Relapse via the Techno Animal reissues and Zonal. I was super impressed by their enthusiasm, their passion for music. Rennie [Jaffe], who runs the label, was very upfront in his positivity towards those records and a label that is behind you will work for you, in a good way. It doesn't mean I need some ass-lickers behind me, but it's just nice to be surrounded by panic, passion and not cynicism. When I approached them and dropped them an e-mail, it was more just off the top of my head. That was never the plan originally, I'd been thinking about maybe releasing it on my own label (PRESSURE), but time is the real enemy of life, you know? I sped myself across a lot of areas, professionally and personally, so it would make more sense to find a label that was good at distribution and promotion, and Relapse were fantastic at that. I sent Rennie an e-mail and, within 15 or 20 minutes, he wrote straight back saying they’d love to do it and that he was aware of the stuff anyway. Without a doubt, I'm not a fan of everything on Relapse by a long way, because I have a very conflicting relationship towards metal music. I don’t dig the vast majority of metal: I find it too cartoony, too formulaic, too cheesy, to be honest. But there's definitely artists they deal with that I like very much. For me, it was a no-brainer to approach them, so it was flattering that they said yes so quickly and that momentum has carried on through dealing with them on this record.
Speaking of the way the MACHINE series was released, how has your discovery of Bandcamp after COVID made you rethink your approach to making and releasing music? When I hear you talking about it, it feels like it opened new doors for you in some ways.
I'm generally a very gushy, positive person, despite what people may think from how they choose to interpret my music. I'm very vibey and have been for a long time. I think that Bandcamp, as you've read, financially saved my life during COVID. That's already a winner for me, I'm already behind it for that reason, but at the same point, Bandcamp Fridays in particular became part of my fascination with doing these EPs. You knew that if you hit it on a Bandcamp Friday, you would not be paying a percentage to the platform and keep all the cash for yourself. It's not like I thought I was going to become a millionaire off these EPs [laughs], but it was exciting and an adrenaline rush to finish them. I was literally finishing these tracks or EPs on the days of shows and then hassling Frederic Aldstadt, who's become a very good friend of mine in Belgium, to master it the same day for me. I was having to come up with titles or trying to finish the artwork in time, hassling Simon Fowler or Zighix to do it on the day of release. It’s sort of unheard of in the music industry as it was, but what it does is it shows you what's possible and what the potential is. Having said that, what I've realized over the four years of dealing with Bandcamp (certainly on the level I've dealt with it) is there's almost a limit in reach because you do it in that way. What I’ve realized is that, if you go through a label, they generally want everything three months before release, so they can set up the distribution, the promotion campaigns and get it to who they need to do to do that professionally. It's two different approaches, but like all musicians, as soon as you finish something you're happy with, you want the world to hear it, you want it out there, loud and proud. Unfortunately, the industry doesn't normally operate like that, so Bandcamp was a way of bypassing that and just channeling your adrenaline and excitement. That's what it did for me.
You moved to Brussels around the same time you discovered Bandcamp. Has it also impacted your music in any way? Even though you’re no longer living in London and Berlin, do you still find yourself drawing parallels between those cities and your current surroundings in Brussels?
It’s funny, someone else asked me that recently. There's undoubtedly a connection to Brussels, but at the same time nothing that makes this a Brussels album, for instance. It wasn't constructed with it in mind. I've literally fallen in love with Brussels, because it’s a sort of freak colony, in the same way Berlin and London are. I'm not in any way connected to the rest of Belgium, you know, to be honest, but I am very much smitten by Brussels. What I love about the city is, apart from the fact people are actually friendly, is certainly the hood I live in. It’s the most multicultural neighborhood in Brussels and Belgium, but also the poorest. I've lived in areas like this, particularly in London, where every culture hated the other one and it was just friction in the areas I lived, whereas this one it's live and let live. If there's an ongoing inspiration from Brussels, it's that I like freak colonies. I like the places where people go to follow their dreams and not be limited by unwanted patriotism or conformity. I like the fact that, in big cities where there's no need to fit in, people don't fit in. In a way, we're like freaks in this neighborhood too, we stand out. The vast majority of my neighborhood is probably Moroccan, Turkish or Congolese, so myself and my wife, who's Japanese, stick out like a sore thumb. I've got no problems with that. In fact, I love walking out the door and not knowing what language I'm going to hear. For me, Brussels is a celebration of diversity and that's what I love aesthetically and artistically as well. If anything, the city just continues to fuel that in me.
You’re playing at Braga’s Semibreve Festival in just a few weeks, presenting 2023’s Black in full. It’s a haunting eulogy to Amy Winehouse, serving both as a response to the Amy documentary and a sonic reflection on the 'what-ifs' that linger in the tragedy of her loss. How did your interest in her legacy sparkle and how does it shape your live performances, compared to other shows of yours?
I'll be honest, when she was alive, I wasn't particularly a fan. I was aware she had a great voice, but I was really put off by the gloss finish of the music. If anything, I was a bit snobby when I first heard Amy Winehouse and just thought it was cultural appropriation, how she was so inspired by black jazz vocalists from the 1950s or black soul vocalists from the 1960s. There was the odd tune, however, that I was definitely impressed by, probably like everyone else. You see a young person with great potential absolutely collapse, with a mechanism to self-destruct in public, and you’re touched by the fact that no one helped her in that situation. I didn't really think that much about it until I was on a long-distance flight to Brazil, I think, and I just put on the documentary, because I'm addicted to music documentaries anyway, even if it's about artists I'm not interested in, and the rest of the choices were just Hollywood garbage. Watching this documentary that was so moving and sort of heartbreaking at the same time struck chords in myself I didn't expect.
Sometimes you see a movie, hear a song, see a painting or read a book which suddenly brings up ghosts of your own past, and I think that's what it did. I didn't come from a happy childhood. My father was literally a ghost, he just wasn't there, never was, kicked me out the house when I was 16. When you see a collapse of a family and a safety network in a person like that, it just echoed how I felt about my own life, in some ways. I really didn't expect that, it came as a huge surprise and I had a tear rolling down my cheek watching it, thousands of feet above the ground. Myself, my daughter (who's now seven) and my wife like to go down YouTube wormholes. My daughter loves Rosalia, reggaeton and Afrobeats stuff that she hears at school. Suddenly, the year I started to work on [Black], Back to Black came on and I remembered that it was a great song. For some reason, everyone in the house loved it. It was one of the few things we all agree on [laughs] and I just had this crazy idea that I said to my wife, a few days later: “You know what? I'd love to do an album where I'm literally sampling and basing it around that one song, as a probe into the idea of melancholy and loss”. When I was working on it, it became apparent to me that this would be a nightmare scenario.
Originally, there were many samples from the Back to Black album, but I extricated all of those, because I knew I'd never get sample clearance and it would be impossible to release it. When I took all that out, I actually loved the fact that there was a specter of Amy Winehouse's song in there, even though it's not in there at all, which made it even more interesting for me. Through working on the album and giving it a narrative (in the same way as I did with Tapping the Conversation), I had to make a book out of her life myself, in order to build the compositions. I had to give them a direction and that was a great challenge. As an artist, it's good to challenge yourself and, in all honesty, I absolutely loved that people would never expect me to do an album in any way connected to Amy Winehouse. That element of surprise is fantastic and it keeps me interested. It's also a sort of a middle finger to people trying to coerce you to become this one-dimensional cartoon character.
It also feels very much connected, both in mood and in sound, to your recent work with KMRU (Joseph Kamaru) on Disconnect. It tapped the same emotions for me, at least.
My wife takes the piss out of me being British, that British people are obsessed with melancholy, miserable music, whether it be Portishead or Radiohead (both of which I love). You know, I'd say I was a miserable bastard for many years, a very difficult person to deal with. With my band God, I think I was very happy to just completely piss people off in empty rooms, and with Techno Animal too. There was a large amount of confrontation and, whenever melodies reared their head into a Techno Animal track, I'd be very quick to be a pain in the ass with Justin and say: “fuck that, let's get rid of that melody”. But some key things happen in your life and you change. My son's fight for survival in the first year of his life, having been close to something so potentially disastrous, and of which you learn about your child, who's fighting for their life - you also learn a lot about yourself in those situations. Due to my father and familial breakups, I never thought I'd get married, let alone have children. I discovered the love of my life in my wife and had a child who was, minutes after he was born, in an intensive care unit - we stayed and lived with him in there for a long time. Those things changed me dramatically and my outlook on life, in order to enjoy every day as much as I can. Although that might not be immediately apparent to anyone listening to my miserable music [laughs], it's the sense of beauty that I'm trying to aspire to. I don't find the Kevin Richard Martin albums miserable, my goal with them is to find beauty in a certain area of sound. I think what you're rightly saying is probably more connected to do with the fact that, as an artist, one of the biggest challenges - particularly in electronic music, because a lot of the machines you use are already full of presets and in-built sounds - is how you can make music in your own image that's instantly identifiable as being original and your own voice. So, hopefully, what you're really picking up on, as far as I'm concerned, is that it's my sound [laughs]. That's the aim, you know? And that's not a detriment to Joseph Kamaru, because that is a collaboration through and through. It's not just me and my sound, but you hear my voice and literally his voice combining and collaborating on that record. When you work with a collaborator, for me, it's always with the utmost respect.
Speaking of collaboration, this year also marks the 10th anniversary of Angels & Devils, one of your most guest-heavy records. I feel like it’s one of the most blissful and chaotic experiences you can get from hearing a The Bug record, going from those instrumental tracks to those contributions from Death Grips, Flowdan and Liz Harris. On that note, how has your approach to collaboration evolved over the years?
I've never really thought about it to be honest. I'd say that it's just an ongoing compulsion to work with vocalists in particular, because I realized I was a really bad vocalist during my time in God and ICE [laughs] - not bad, it was therapy for me. But when I get to work with people like Gonjasufi, Liz Harris or Flowdan as vocalists, I realize how good they are. Even sonically and production wise, I'm always thinking other people are better, it's an ongoing self-critique. I've always liked the idea of collaboration - pretty much found it essential in lots of ways with The Bug - and I think it hasn't really changed, it's just an ongoing need to work with vocalists in particular. I remember Justin contributed guitar on Fat Mac, because the I'd previously played his guitar line on a synth. I felt it wasn't heavy enough, so I asked him if he would reinforce it by emulating the riff, which he did perfectly. I also asked him to play the guitar on Catch A Fire, which is there but very spindly - it's like a ghost of Justin echoing throughout. But I don't recall since Tapping the Conversation any other instrumental collaborators on The Bug tracks, it's all vocalists. I would continue to want to work with great vocalists and that was from point one, The Bug-wise. What has changed is it's become even more varied, the people I've worked and attempted to work with. Originally, my goal with The Bug was to make a British-Jamaican fusion - that sounds like a food dish or something [laughs]. It was just a way of trying to construct a new form of dancehall I wanted to hear and I only wanted to work with Jamaican vocalists at that time. It was very much down to The Rootsman linking me up with Daddy Freddy, which I'll always be grateful to him. I guess what's changed over time is what I want to cover with The Bug, so therefore, not only has the sonic palette changed, but also the range of vocalists I've worked with.
I feel like it’s apparent listening to your music, but your music taste is just as diverse as the range of sounds you explore. I’ve noticed you regularly recommend and post a lot of albums on social media: jazz greats (Pharoah Sanders, Miles Davis), electronic mainstays (Flying Lotus, Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada), hip-hop acts old and new (Public Enemy, Mobb Deep, Gravediggaz, Clipse, ELUCID, JPEGMAFIA) and even past collaborators (Dälek, Moor Mother). You were just speaking about your love for Portishead and Radiohead as well.
Like everyone, COVID made me question why even I'm bothered with music. I think it was only two times previously when I've actively thought about giving up making music, when I was at a very low point. COVID felt like the coming apocalypse, with people dying across the globe and it meant very big questions were raised. I could feel my passion for music dwindling, because it didn't make sense to be making music at that point. Knowing what was happening within me, I had the idea of forcing myself to listen to an album a day, just to rekindle my love for music. I also thought: “You know what? If people do give a shit about what I do, why I do it and what's inspired me, maybe they'd find it interesting if I share what I'm listening to on a daily basis”. That was reflected in posting the albums I listened to then and still listen to every day. Again, out of negativity, I tried to find a positive angle. Some people are very manipulative in how they use social media and it wasn't about that. Otherwise, I would link all the artists when I posted the albums. It was just an honest reflection of the music I listened to and continues to be so.
What artists and records from this year have really grabbed your attention lately?
ELUCID’s new album is absolutely incredible, it's one of my favorites this year. I hate being asked that question, I ask everyone the same question myself [laughs]. It's almost a joke amongst my friends that they know I always ask people what are they checking lately, because I want to find out about what other music's out there. I would say that the most recent album that blew me away was the one from ELUCID. In a way, it reminded me of what I loved about Company Flow or Antipop Consortium, but done in a more contemporary way.
Are there any artists that you've shared your love for that you'd love to collaborate with on future projects?
I'm working on a full album with Hatis Noit, who's on a label called Erased Tapes, we've released one or two tracks in the past. That's going to probably be the next album I'm part of, unless I do solo albums in between. There are always artists I’d love to work with [laughs]. That's an ongoing list, a fantasy list, but there's no one I've reached out to specifically. On one hand, I remember discussing with Caspar Brötzmann the idea of doing a record together of some form, but both of our schedules haven’t quite coincided. ELUCID, who I just mentioned, we've been talking a year or two on and off about doing some collabs and it's just not happened. There's only so many minutes in a day and, like I said, time is really the enemy. There'll always be someone I wanna collaborate with, that's for sure.
On the topic of collaborations, you’ve worked with filmmaker Pedro Maia on the visuals for Frequencies for Leaving Earth. How did that pan out and how do the visuals reflect and enhance the soundscapes across those five volumes?
I'm trying to think where I first met Pedro. It would’ve probably been a music festival somewhere, we both lived in Berlin at the time and we met each other. He's visually as direct, forthright and stubborn as I am in my musical direction. We were both admirers of each other's work. To be honest, I've always been a little bit suspicious of A/V shows, I felt that it often results in the music becoming secondary to the visual. He proposed this mental idea for the Frequencies for Leaving Earth albums, that I’d perform in a rectangular box for which he blasts me with projections, lights and fills up the box with smoke. What he did was absolutely magical, I was blown away. It was a really genius move on his part. We didn't do many shows (I think we've only done three like that), because it's expensive to set up. We're both really busy, so there hasn't been enough of that show. It was great to work with Pedro, not because he's Portuguese, just because he's a great artist. The Portuguese side of it is a bonus [laughs].
Are there any future plans to replicate that universe of MACHINE, either to the fullest extent of those 21 tracks or the 12 tracks of the final album, in a live setting?
The tracks were always meant for a live setting and how I perform them is a combination between live decks and effects. It’s visceral and improvised to an extent, but there's always the foundation of the main rhythms. What I've ended up doing is incorporating some of those rhythms into shows with Flowdan and Manga Saint Hilare. That's been interesting, because I know those rhythms are super aggressive and noise for them. They don't leave much space for vocals, but it's been brilliant hearing what they've come up with live and to be able to work on the rhythms with vocals on top, which I hadn't envisaged. That's exactly what I did by approaching Magugu as well, who voiced a track called Deep in a Mud to coincide with the release of the album. I just had a madcap idea: what wouldn't you expect to accompany the release of my first solo instrumental album? A vocal! [laughs] I approached Magugu and he was very cool, liked the track a lot and we worked super quick on it. I think it was all done in two weeks, in terms of him voicing, me mixing, mastering done by Frederic [Aldstadt], artwork done by me, video done in-house at Relapse. It felt good again, because it reminded me of the energy of working on the tracks individually.
I know it's probably hard to just pinpoint a single highlight, given we're talking about 36 years’ worth of releases, but do you feel like there's a particular record that has shaped your career the most so far?
The next one [laughs]. I don't like looking backwards, it's almost an obsessive-compulsive disorder that I just want to keep moving forward. I still feel like I haven't fully developed my vocabulary or intensified my craft. It's that yearning to keep surprising and shocking myself, to keep me interested and inspired. There’s a lineage, a trajectory and a sound that people would see as being recognizably mine. At the same time, I'm also aware, as a fan of music, that what I want from artists I like is to feel that they're swerving and moving too. I'm not a big fan of artists just totally jettisoning what I like about them and doing something completely different, it feels really knee-jerk. How you can keep developing what you do, refreshing it and hopefully coming with fresh angles whilst retaining your identity is the challenge. I guess that's what I mean, really.