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Martin Solveig's Rocking Interview

Author: Phil Watkins
Thursday, January 13, 2005

Martin Solveig is possibly one of the foremost artists in house music today, coming off one of the biggest albums of last year "Sur La Terre" featuring the massive crossover anthem "Rocking Music". Getting ready now for his new album Martin set to grace our shores for a whirlwind tour in a world exclusive to preview his new material in a world exclusive with the Family music Machine this Saturday, I got the chance to speak to Martin while he was in Paris and this is what he had to say.

When you were younger you were into a lot of different styles of music and just as you were starting to find it DJing was also being born, what was that like for you growing up in Paris and experiencing all of that just as it was growing up so to speak-

Well I started my musical experiences quite a long time ago I took classic music lessons when I was young and then I started work as a teenager as a DJ very fast, I was thirteen years old exactly and now it has been fifteen years which is quite awhile and through the years I have basically experienced the natural evolution of music during those times and I also paid a lot of interest to what happened before me in music, the sixties, the seventies that I wasn't born with, so I think I probably established a bit of my musical background and culture.

It would have given you an excellent foundation to be a DJ-

I think to be a DJ is a very good foundation. It is definitely something that comes from your personal taste. To be a DJ helps you learn how to communicate your taste to the crowd. You know you have to make them dance, you have to make them appreciate and sometimes this is with quite a large audience and this takes a lot, sometimes you have to be a little less obvious it really is all about the communication between the audience and your taste.

France has been one of the leaders in music, it is very famous for its music, I'm sure you get a first hand taste of it every day it seems that especially house music in France. Every time it breaks new boundaries, it is new all the time even with Black Strobe, yourself and for sometime the Africanism label, there are so many new things that house music is turning into-

I agree, I realise d that the essence of this music that spans so many different styles one thing is that when you can see that one of these styes is getting a little less popular and what makes it so popular is when there are new things coming, new things happening, anew mixture or fusion of different styles and everything it changes the story because it is not a very many new styles at the moment, which means that when you stay in the very strict basis of your style sometimes people get a little bored and if you mix a little bit of different styles and everything you are going to get a lot more appreciation at least that's what I consider to be true of the last few years.

That's great, now your own production qualities fuse what I like to call the "African Energy", would you understand what I meant when I said that-

Oh yeah, I try to bring the energy of the African rhythm in my beats...

It's always very positive and thick and especially in a lot of your production lately it really tends to announces your style in such a way that crowds seem to grow completely nuts, what do you personally love expressing to people in your own production-

Well it is very much about concentrated energy and positive stuff you know and there is no stronger message than the music itself and I think there is not much of a second or third degree in music and especially at this time, you know, just something that makes you smile or makes you move or dance which is already fantastic in itself. That is exactly the message that I try and focus on, I don't have any political messages or anything like that.

That's makes a welcome change, now you did mention that you were fairly young in starting up, and they say often starting young can be th
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