Artist: Martinesque
Title: Think Outside The Box (LP)
Label: Adam’s Bite
Cat. #: ADAMLP002
Format: Vinyl & Digital
Release Date: 23rd June 2023
Tracklist
A Space Night
B1 Lost In Time
B2 Replicate
C1 The Broken Circle
C2 Floating Mirror
D Think Outside The Box
E Perceptions
F1 Back In The Days
F2 Beholder
Adam’s Bite label regular Martinesque serves up his long-awaited debut album ‘Think Outside The Box’ this June, with the nine-track trip exploring classy dancefloor dynamics drawn from two decades of personal history with electronic music in a coherent but eclectic fashion.
Martinesque, aka Adrian Martin, is a Swiss scene mainstay who brings 90s Mid-Western US style to his tracks. He is also head of bookings at the revered Elysia, having held various vital residencies in Switzerland. Previous outings on the label have mixed up classy house and minimal-leaning techno with meditative rhythms, New York colour and classic acid, and now he ups his game with a debut album on Adam’s Bite that conjures up nostalgic memories of nights gone by, with nods to acid, breaks, pop, trance and big beat tied together by that unique Martinesque style.
“This is a set of transcendent tools dreamt up the morning after and presented to invite receptors to rearrange, reshape, and recompile. This is the sum of its parts, and parts might differ.” – Martinesque.
The album opener ‘Space Night’ is a lithe and elastic house cut with fresh cosmic melodies lifting you off your feet and starting this journey in fine fashion. ‘Lost In Time’ then slips into cruise mode with smooth tech house and trippy sci-fi details over the top of a compelling bassline. ‘Replicate’ ups the ante with more tightly coiled tech funk – the rubbery bass and drums interlinking perfectly as vocal details and alien life forms peel away up top. ‘Broken Circle’ brings expert sound designs and intricate drum programming to another bright, balmy astral tech house cut that suspends you just above the dance floor, while ‘Floating Mirror’ zones you out with its star-gazing pads and molten acid lines over slick deep house drums.
The title track is an epic eight-minute adventure that goes into darker house territory with a real sense of tension, and ‘Perceptions’ is a thumping acid cut with undulating 303s, slinky drums and icy hi hats all working you into a meditative state. After the sublime progressive tribal sounds of ‘Back In The Day’ comes closer ‘Beholder,’ a bristling melange of broken beat loops and cosmic turbulence that zones you out with its richly layered sounds. ‘Think Outside The Box’ does just that and is a sublime soundscape from Martinesque.