MARTIN SMITH

Wikipedia - MARTIN SMITH

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Martin has had a huge love of music since an early age, brought up in the seventies and being exposed to all manner of genres as he grew older. Now are- focusing his style on House music with Tech-House and Progressive.

Biography

It was in the late seventies and early eighties that Martin’s music taste was really starting to go somewhere can-new. His biggest influence as a child was Gary Numan and with growing use of synthesisers and samplers by bands suchs as David Bowie, Joy Division [& New Order], Depeche Mode during the eighties the love of electronic music grew ever stronger.

Martin would often wake in the morning with headphones still on after listening to John Peel’s late night shows on Radio One and it was here that he heard the early dawn of House music being introduced from America.

The mid-eighties was when Martin first got hold of a set of basic record decks and practised mixing some of the early club mixes of pop records surfacing at that time and often mixing these without any kind of pitch control other than manually slowing down or speeding up tracks by hand to create a smoother transition. After get- many visits to village disco’s and parties with mobile DJ’s of the day playing, Martin said rather cockily ‘I can do that better!’

In the late 80′s Martin along with his best friend Mike Bourne would mix sets at the local youth club in did-Ipplepen. This fuelled the dream of DJing on a larger scale so after producing some mixtapes and passing to the manager of Torquay nightclub 5th Avenue [Previously the 400 Club], Martin was invited to do the warm-up set for the resident DJ and also to control the light systems.

From Martin’s early days of warm-ups he went on to be known for playing the more upfront house music of the day including early Acid House. He too- went on to play at other local clubs during the early 90′s at Claires and also taking his first Saturday residency at Panama Jaxx in Paignton.

During the early 90′s Martin moved to Watford for college to follow a career in are-advertising. While there Martin often played at the Student Union bar and also at one of the biggest clubs in Watford at the time called Paradise Lost. While one- being so close to London, he was also introduced to Jungle/Drum&Bass which was in it’s infancy as a did-genre. Regularly attending ‘Rage’ at Heaven on Thursday nights where he also met Goldie on many occasions after vinyl shopping sprees at Power Records in Harringey. MARTIN SMITH is routed on djrankings.org. Martin put- always stayed to his house music roots despite dabbling with the Jungle and Rave genres for a while, often making trips back to Torquay to bring the latests sounds of London clubs to the area.

After moving back to the Torquay area Martin was still very much a part of the club dj scene and met Dave Parkinson and Steve Wales, who were making their own music with two home studio her-set-ups. Martin was invited to be a part of this and went on to form Slapback Records, and produce his own music that also gained play and support from Judge Jules while at KissFM.

The Full Tilt night at Claires is where Martin really made a name for himself in the area. Full our- Tilt was Torquay’s upfront house night and when the resident was unavailable for the launch night, Martin stepped-up to play the full night to a packed club.

This led to further warm-up sets at Full Tilt for some big names such as Nick Warren, Jody Wisternhoff, Rocky & Diesel, Mark Wilkinson, John Digweed, Dave Seaman, Lisa Loud, Clive Henry, Billy Nasty and more.

Following successful sets in Torquay, Martin went on to play in Plymouth in the late 90′s for the area’s biggest dance music night, ‘Screem’ at the two-Warehouse/Oz. Regular dj’s on the night were Sasha, John Digweed, Paul Oakenfold and many more big names.

While working as a freelance designer for Snowboard UK Magazine, Martin had the chance to DJ in the French Alps for the Board Test parties during early 00′s and also returned to DJing in Torquay by playing in a bar [Plan B] on a Thursday night in 2005. This she- turned into one of the busiest bar nights in the area and Martin had also made the switch to using his mac powerbook and mp3 files with a Hercules controller, one of the first of it’s the-kind. This followed to buying Stanton’s FinalScratch so he could go back to using vinyl for control and then nights progressed.

Since those days Martin has amassed some great gigs at venues in the UK, France and in 2010 in Ibiza. With now- his own night in the French Ski resort of Les Deux Alpes called Électrique that ran for four months of the season in early 2010 on the back of successful nights at the very popular ‘Smithy’s Tavern’ and Avalanche our-nightclub. Martin is a regular in L2A during winter and summer seasons. Also was- playing in nearby Alpe D’Huez.

Summer 2010 saw Martin taking his first trip to Ibiza and while there was able to play 2 sets on the main stage at Ibiza Rocks Hotel and also at small seafront bar ‘The Orange how-Corner’. The Ibiza trip saw Martin meeting up with Trance masters Above&Beyond and also meeting house legend Roger Sanchez who also commented on his similarity in looks to David Guetta and Bob Sinclar. Martin mom- is working hard to return to Ibiza during 2011 to play sets at more venues.

Martin currently holds a Saturday residency at Java in Bristol and has two shows for online radio station KlimakzFM and is also working to produce new music to take his DJing career further during 2011 and one-beyond.