Special Deliveries
Electric Birds: Seattle's First Couple of Electronic Music
Tools
Electric Birds
Stranger Personals
w/Module, CNSE
Thurs Dec 12, Chop Suey, $6.
"Special" is a word that crops up often when Mike Martinez and Danielle Damasius come up in conversation. The Berkeley, California transplants value quality over quantity, channeling their creative powers and business acumen into the musical outfit Electric Birds and the label Deluxe Records, respectively. Those with an ear to the experimental-electronic underground have been tripping to Electric Birds' special, texturally rich and emotionally vibrant music since 2000's outstanding self-titled album (in live performances, Martinez creates the sounds while Damasius supplies video backdrops), and Deluxe boasts a select number of international artists on the forefront of electronic boundary-busting.
The couple moved to Seattle from the Bay Area in October 2000; they'd started Deluxe five years earlier in order to issue the debut album by Martinez's previous band, the space-rock unit Cars Get Crushed. Poor and jobless, they lived on the cheap to fund the record while learning the music-biz ropes the hard way. Oddly for someone so immersed in electronic music, Martinez began his career in hardcore punk (he's still an avid skateboarder), which may account for his DIY aesthetic. "I was into punk rock because you could do whatever you wanted and there were no rules," Martinez says. "But I wasn't so into the rage. So I eventually started getting into Gastr Del Sol, Pink Floyd and Slint." Working at Berkeley's hip Mod Lang record shop also furthered Martinez's musical education; he discovered seminal artists like Tangerine Dream, Can, and Steve Reich, who opened his mind to the possibilities of tone and rhythm. "And then I started getting into all this crazy German minimal techno, Chain Reaction, Autechre, Aphex Twin," Martinez relates.
Fed up with touring and typical rock-band bullshit--and fueled by an intense romance with Björk's Debut--Martinez embarked on his solo flight as Electric Birds. On albums such as Electric Birds and 2001's Panorama (both on Deluxe) and 2002's Gradations (on German powerhouse label Mille Plateaux), Martinez fused sonorous minimal electronics with inventive post-rock dynamics and beguiling gamelan rhythms and textures. Though he confesses to geeking out with music-software programs, Martinez always imbues his tracks with an organic soulfulness rare in a scene glutted with sterile binary-code crunching. Labels worldwide now clamor for his work, but unlike many electronica producers he remains selective about what he releases.
Such selectivity also guides Deluxe Records' release schedule. "We put [demos] through various tests," says Martinez. "Car stereo, bedroom, sleeping... we're open to any style of music. If somebody sent us a death-metal record and we loved it, we might put it out."
"We take a lot of time before we release something," Damasius expains. Martinez adds, "We look for stuff you can't put your finger on what's special about it."
The company kicked into serious gear in 1999, and today has but 14 releases; all are housed in beautifully designed digipaks (save for Transfer, Disc's clear vinyl LP of locked grooves) and reflect Martinez and Damasius' diverse tastes. With a back catalog that includes Blevin Blectum's bizarre, electro-popping Talon Slalom, the two Night Owls compilations of insomniacal ambience, and Matmos' The West (the imprint's best-seller at 6,000--most Deluxe discs sell around 2,000 copies), Deluxe has become one of the world's elite experimental-music labels.
As you might imagine, being an artist and label boss in cahoots with your spouse has its ups and downs. "We're lucky because we have sort of different musical tastes that complement each other," Martinez says. "I tend to be more adventurous and she tends to be more grounded, so it balances out. I like everything we've put out, but I've made some business mistakes."
"I'm always right about business matters," Damasius claims. "But he always wins. We both have to work on the records, so it's important for us to like 'em."
After helping to build the Bay Area into an electronic-music mecca, Martinez and Damasius have found Seattle's scene smaller but full of brilliant people, including Tone record store owner David Farrell (AKA Module), Jerry Abstract, and Orac Records honcho Randy Jones (promoter of the Baltic Room's ROBO.Trash night). "People are getting into newer, weirder stuff, but maybe it's not as widespread as it is in San Francisco," Martinez observes.
"Seattle's so historically rock that a lot of people who would like more experimental things don't get exposed to them," says Damasius. Martinez hopes to see more Seattle clubs book shows with both electronic and indie-rock bands. "I feel like people will catch on," he says. "Electronic music made on laptops to me is normal; it's not weird or futuristic at all. It's the music being made now."
Still, Electric Birds like Seattle and plan to roost here for a while. "When we were in San Francisco, the music scene could get crazy and cheesy," Martinez admits. "Seattle seems like a more genuine place. You can do whatever you want and not have to worry about scenester bullshit."
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