The sound of my life as my family and I experience displacement due to flooding and atmospheric rivers. Travels around the world - some rivers swell as some shrink. Meditations on rain, rivers, and love.
NEW ALBUM: Martez "DRONE POEMS" out 2/17/23
The Drone Poems series represents meditations, feelings and moods expressed through expansive breathy textures. These pieces reflect a radical aesthetic departure from the Lamentos series, which primarily features wind instruments (flutes, saxophones) as the primary engines of sound.
I composed and recorded Behind the Veil and the other pieces on Drone Poems over the summer of 2022 and early 2023 in Oakland and Berkeley, California during what we now call fire season, when a barbecue spark, a misguided bottle rocket, or a random lightning strike can set off a chain of ignitions to poison every breath with smoky air for days on end. Fortunately last year wasn’t that bad, but each day nonetheless began with the anxiety and dread and the question: “Is today gonna be the day?”
The daily news: Russia brutalizing Ukraine, government fuckery, ongoing plagues, colonization of space, schools shot up, cops gone wild, catastrophic storms and everyone stressing about money.
Drone Poems is the effort to bear witness to the world while remaining connected to the eternal.
New Music: Martez "Shattered" (Lamentos Vol. 3)
Over the past two years, I’ve continued a practice of sonic mourning rituals in a musical container called LAMENTOS. Here is the latest in the series called “Shattered”, a collection of melancholy, raw and plaintive pieces on woodwinds, piano and other assorted instruments. Recorded February-April 2022 in Oakland, California.
New song: Ocote Soul Sounds "Blues for Ukraine"
How to fully express the deep grief in watching the slow motion buildup of aggression, the growing carnage, the racism that seems to emerge even within crises that should unite? Sometimes peace feels like further away than ever. Yet we persist.
New album: Martez "Shadow Work"
The second in a series of works initiated in the beginning of the pandemic to sonify the overwhelming feeling of loss. Let the grief wash over you.
New Music: Chris Gabo "Price of Anarchy"
I spent a month of early morning sessions with singer / MC Chris Gabo engineering vocals and adding a sparing amount woodwinds and keyboards. The sessions were a lot of fun and we got to become good friends. He’s a great lyricist and gets into a vast amount of emotional territory and never fails to crack me up. In his other life, he’s an accomplished playwright and screenwriter: you can his work on HBO’s “In Treatment,” “Parasite” and more to come.
New Single / Video by Martez: "Don't Make Me Wait"
The video for the new single”Don’t Make Me Wait” by Martez. Instruments, composition and video by Martín Perna
New Music: Martez - Lamentos
A new album very unlike any of my others- minimalist instrumental sonification of various moods, feelings and moments of the first eighteen months of the pandemic reality. Recorded in Oakland, CA.
New Music: Martez
Once upon a time a young man would walk along on the bayou. He followed a princess to the cold north, where he was trapped in a barn. The princess cast a spell and released him. He followed the sun to where it swims in the water.
I had a lot of time to myself during the pandemic, away from the musical mobs I have worked with for the past 25 years. I’ll be back with them for more, but in the meantime, enjoy these sounds.