TIDAL’s Inspiration series asks artists to explain where the spark comes from — and what to do when it can’t be found.
By Eduardo Baldera. As told to Brad Farberman. Caracol, the first half of Martox’s debut album, is out now.
For this album specifically, we’re getting a lot of inspiration from Dominican sounds. So we’re merging our past style of electronic music with classic Dominican sounds ranging from merengue, we’re trying out some bachata stuff, reggaeton merged with merengue. There’s a rhythm called bambula, which is from a coast region in the DR, and not many people even here in the DR know that rhythm. So we’re experimenting with that. So when we’re trying to find inspiration for this album, we always go back to what our parents were listening, what musicians we play with are listening, what they are learning. For example, that rhythm bambula, we’ve never heard of it. We had something written and we were actually blocked with that one, because it was the first song we wrote, like four years ago. And it was crucial to the theme of the album in terms of lyrics, but the style of the production we have didn’t match the rest of the album. And it was the last song we had to finish to deliver the album. So we actually went to a percussionist friend of ours and asked him, like, “We want to do something with these lyrics, but we don’t want it to be merengue.” Which is the first thought that comes to mind when you think of Dominican music. “We don’t think it would fit merengue.” So he told us about bambula. So for this album, it has been a lot of research on Dominican sounds or instruments. And I think that inspired a lot of it. It’s not always the case right now, because we’ve been working on this project for two years. We can say that. But before, we are always working with a concept. So I think that helps to find inspiration, because you can talk about it. If you are trying to come up with ideas out of nothing, it will be hard to bounce ideas with collaborators and stuff. So since we always have some kind of concert for each project, finding inspiration often means talking to people, and pitching them, like, “We’re trying to do this.” All our friends who are very invested in the project, we always invite ’em, show them what we have and just brainstorm.
Before, we used to go to a house on the beach — Juan’s family has a house on the beach. But last year we started working in the mountains. We just get out of the city — small city, but still a city — and we just go out, do a camp, invite some friends over so we can all work together. And that’s been helpful this past year. It actually helps because we’re super DIY, so we do most of the stuff. We’re always editing something, planning some trip, doing our PR locally, organizing the media tour for the album, organizing some concert with our crew. So for example, right now, we haven’t, except for a little featuring we did like two weeks ago, we haven’t written or started any new ideas in a month. So once we come back to creating, we have that desire, and we already even have our ideas fresh. So I think that being independent and having to do all those things that people don’t want to do, help us coming back with more desire to create, once we can. Because right now, finishing the album, making videos, it takes a lot of time, so we aren’t every day full-on working, writing. So I think that helps, at least not to get the block.
