{"title":"Kevin Richard Martin","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"black-3","title":"Black","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eBlack\u003c\/i\u003e is a musical eulogy to Amy Winehouse, a heartfelt memorial to a sorrowful demise. Its an album of predominantly beatless ambience possessed by the ghost of \u003ci\u003eBack to Black\u003c\/i\u003e. Fragmented moods and hypnotic drones melt together as its circular beauty is set adrift, floating away into an endless void, where the original only remains in spirit alone. It doesn’t make particular sense why I was drawn to this idea and compelled to immerse myself in the original song, and her life in general, but sometimes you just have to roll with your muse. Having barely registered her whilst she was alive and not cared for Mark Ronson's poptastic productions, it was only when I heard of her tragic death that it struck an unexpected chord, recalling the same surreal emotional impact as when I had heard of Kurt Cobain's premature passing previously. Both figures were unarguably gifted, but both left this planet largely without essential support, whilst they were at the peak of their powers and on top of the musical world. Gone too soon and departed too young, a world-weary voice carried on a downward spiral, Amy Winehouse seemed trapped in her self-destructive descent. It was only years later, whilst randomly watching Asif Kapadia's moving bio doc 'Amy' on a long-distance flight, that I realised the scale of her greatness and the tragedy of the circumstances that led to her untimely death. This album is simultaneously a treatise on lovelessness, tragedy and loss, echoing the absence of a support network when it matters most during such a freefall. And just as myself and others I know shed tears watching that 'Amy' documentary, this album is as much a reaction to the universal emotional themes conveyed within that touching documentary as to the tragic life of Amy herself. I have been working on the idea of this sonic album for over a year, and the slo-mo dream rotations remain as blurred and impressionistic as they are repetitive and haunting. An eerie cocktail of spectral jazz, shoegaze drone and dubbed out ambient music, it continues the solo path I have been developing as KRM. I hope it strikes a chord.” - Kevin Richard Martin.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Intercranial Records","offers":[{"title":"Black LPx2","offer_id":50417067491659,"sku":"2191316","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/ab49c0e5-ff9d-cd06-18f4-de329dc8f57e_def9392e_thumbnail_4096.png?v=1726715620"},{"product_id":"return-to-solaris","title":"Return to Solaris","description":"\u003cp\u003eAcclaimed UK electronic musician Kevin Richard Martin (The Bug, King Midas Sound) releases a stunningly powerful rescore of Andrei Tarkovsky’s seminal 1972 movie \u003ci\u003eSolaris\u003c\/i\u003e on Phantom Limb. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn May 2020, British musician Kevin Martin was invited by the Vooruit arts centre in Gent, Belgium to compose a new score for a film of his choice. Having been long inspired by pioneering Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, Martin tells us that his 1972 masterpiece \u003ci\u003eSolaris\u003c\/i\u003e was the “natural choice”. The film is an unattested giant, not only of science fiction and Soviet film, but also in the annals cinematic history. And its original score, composed by regular Tarkovsky collaborator and early Soviet electronic musician Eduard Artemyev, is a magnificent work of haunting majesty, a key element to the film’s brilliance. Martin’s challenge was great: “it was with a certain amount of trepidation I stepped into such large footprints,” he writes. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe results - an all new score entitled \u003ci\u003eReturn to Solaris \u003c\/i\u003e- are breathtaking. The film is intense, psychologically devastating and bleakly compelling. Interweaving themes of love, horror, sorrow, nostalgia, memory and dystopia, Martin’s score expertly mirrors this expansive breadth of psychic weight, from existential dread to heartbreaking poignancy, with immense emotional gravity. Drawn to its “narrative struggle between organic, pastoral memories of a lost past, and the harsh, dystopian realities of a futuristic hell,” Martin employs atonal noise, simmering waves of distorted synthesis, undulating drones and otherworldly, astronomic sound-design to crushing effect. Subtly submerged recurring motifs - reflections of individual characters - rise and fall amidst the fog, occasionally illuminating the doom like motes of starlight, before settling back into the density of space. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlbum opener “Theme for Kris'' begins with a shimmering, alien tone, mimicking a disembodied, metallic choralsong that creeps and snakes about an unsettling frequency range. Ghosts aboard a deserted space station. The hissing, technological dystopia of subsequent track “Solaris'' sends evaporating torrents of steam through bulging, clanging, echoing chords, while later on the record, “In Love With A Ghost” revisits these same passages of seething doom, but now refocused into billowing, droning clouds of noise. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDetermined that his score should retain the eerie, dreamlike mood of the film and authenticity to its era and origin, Kevin mined his analogue lab for suitable instruments and recording equipment, favouring antiquated, hands-on hardware over computer-based production techniques. With Voorhuit’s help, he acquired an original Pulsar 23 drum machine, created by cult Russian synth builders SOMA Laboratory. Appropriately, much of his rescore is centred around its spectral, strung-out sounds. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe project represents many firsts for Kevin: his first commissioned soundtrack; his first composition to picture; his first work in his new Belgian home after a move from Berlin; his first live performance to film screening. On completion, he performed \u003ci\u003eReturn to Solaris\u003c\/i\u003e to picture over sold out two nights in October 2020, in the beautiful Voorhuit concert theatre of Gent, Belgium. And, with huge personal significance, this was his first public performance of the Covid era. He performed to a socially distanced crowd, many of whom unaware of his existing profile, “which made the rapturous reception and incredible feedback to the performance all the more memorable,” he writes. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTarkovsky’s Solaris won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival and was screened for an incredible fifteen years uninterrupted in the Soviet Union. It is placed highly in “greatest movies of all time” lists published by Empire and the BBC, among others. Steven Soderburgh directed a Hollywood remake in 2002, starring George Clooney, and scored by Cliff Martinez. \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Phantom Limb","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP | x2","offer_id":50460106981707,"sku":"1122858","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/6784ac99-596c-4efd-b2a6-9be1df5d75b1_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727229433"},{"product_id":"sub-zero","title":"Sub Zero","description":"\u003cp\u003eJust when you thought Kevin Richard Martin's music couldn’t go any slower, lower or deeper, \u003cem\u003eSub Zero\u003c\/em\u003e emerges. A slow-motion excavation of drug-tech, dub, dreamy noise and frozen ambience, the album gradually mutates into hypnotic pulsations and melodic melancholia. It is arguably Martin’s most striking release to date under his given name.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOriginally released digitally on Bandcamp only in the depths of winter 2022, amid the final year of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine, this desolate epic went on to become KRM's best-selling digital album on the platform. With persistent demand for a vinyl pressing and a full DSP release from fans, Martin thought the time was right for Sub Zero to finally surface in its full glory: remastered and paired with fresh new artwork.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnnervingly, the album is as beautiful as it is solemn, as glacial as it is relentless, and as subtle as it is terrifying. A trip into a sonic abyss, with a tour of a philosophical void, it’s to my ears, KRM’s most seductive work yet, and also his most emotionally resonant. Martin expertly balances tear-jerking motifs with heavier than hell rhythmic weight. With its melodic fog, eternal drones and eerie atmospherics, the peripheral throb of distant kick drums, the heartbeat punctuation of cavernous subs and the snowstorm blizzard of fuzz absolutely envelopes the mind, whilst crushing the soul.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn terms of lineage, \u003cem\u003eSub Zero\u003c\/em\u003e might recall a more paranoid Porter Ricks, a dystopian Gas, or a brutally dubbed-out Pan Sonic. Most fitting, however, is its kinship with the deepest dub terrain Martin previously explored on In Blue, The Bug’s acclaimed 2020 collaboration with Dis Fig for Hyperdub, where he obsessively probed subaqueous pulses and low-end modulations.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSub Zero\u003c\/em\u003e is possibly the most minimal, desolate, and deviant dub record yet released on Martin’s Pressure label. It marks the point at which dub disappears into its own effects trails. Dub music capturing frozen moments in time. Dub as an addictive painkiller, that sounds both sacred and ocean deep.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Pressure","offers":[{"title":"2LP - Black","offer_id":56303670722891,"sku":"R5736-8522","price":32.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/KRMSUBZEROFRONTSleeveforPress.jpg?v=1768405375"},{"product_id":"sub-zero-refractions-the-bug-ghost-dubs-remixes","title":"Sub Zero - Refractions (The Bug \/ Ghost Dubs Remixes)","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Bug and Ghost Dubs relentlessly probe and atomize original material culled from Kevin Richard Martin's critically acclaimed 'Sub Zero' album. (\"Monolithic and unforgiving, even by the Bug’s standards, representing his most suffocating take on ambient dub yet.\" Pitchfork) Remixed to punish sound systems and freeze up the dance, both Fiedler and Martin trade fresh, contrasting blows, after their recent IMPLOSION face off album on PRESSURE last year. (Dub\/Reggae album of the year, 2025, in 'The Wire') The resulting 4 remixes are every bit as hypnotic and persuasive as you would hope for from productions fresh out the soundlabs of Michael Fiedler aka GHOST DUBS and Kevin Richard Martin under his dancefloor destroying Bug alias. Both producers intensify the desolate mood of the originals but introduce demolition inducing beats which provide the literally irresistible momentum. Echoes of the originals are respected and heard throughout, but the extra gear shifts pay off brilliantly. Guaranteed to push serious air, and test the most powerful of sub woofers, these 4 remixes vary from heavy to superheavyweight. i.e. GHOST DUBS outputs a deliriously stoned headnod with his zonal refix of 'When I'm Gone', which miraculously sounds both subtley mysterious, but monolithically huge, whilst The Bug prowls ice cold, on the noirish, narcotic, instrumental hip hop of 'Too Human', which sounds like prime Mobb Deep mixed by Rhythm \u0026amp; Sound' at 16 bpm. Essential remixes of an already very special album, the original atmosphere is not only captured expertly, it is categorically amplified. LARGE.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Pressure","offers":[{"title":"12\" - Black","offer_id":57465620201803,"sku":"R4786-3746","price":19.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/PRESH029.jpg?v=1780045297"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/de\/collections\/kevin-richard-martin.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}