MySpacea place for friends

'The exercise of the internal demons', the possibility to expose his obsessions through audio. 'Exorcizo', the title of Israel Martinez' CD, is Spanish slang created with the words exorcism and exercise. If one reads his biography, where he played concerts and some of the prizes he won, you may expect some highly serious, academic form of electro-acoustic music. But that's half the story, I guess. Martinez adds humor to his music, as well as some force to the sounds he uses. Take 'Mi Vida', which starts with the ignition of a car, then a car ride and, how sad, a car crash, all spiced up with car engine sounds. Now that is humor, and noise, I guess. And the recurring theme of noise comes back in the other four tracks too. As said Martinez likes a bit of noise in his music, thus hiding his original sound sources, but he doesn't step into the trap of pure distortion or being too academic in his processing, but rather tells us a nice story of his own, as each of these pieces is a narrative (without words) piece of music, like 'Epidermis', using the sound of someone getting a tattoo, but changing into a massive, machine like piece. This is the noise that I like: thoughtful, loud and simply good. (FdW)
VITAL WEEKLY (NL)

"Mi Vida by Israel Martínez is the acoustic account of a car ride that comes to a sudden, tragic end. The piece is composed solely of traffic noise, engine sounds, the squealing of brakes and the crunching of metal. It doesn’t follow a linear narrative structure; rather, it amalgamates content elements and acoustic components in random, occasionally reversed sequence. The title “Mi Vida” alludes to the automobile’s place in our society and a human being’s own life spent—and ultimately ended—in a car moving from Point A to Point B." TEXT BY ARS ELECTRONICA

ENG

Israel Martínez (Guadalajara, Mexico. 1979) is composer and sound artist with a degree in communications. He has worked for different fields: installation and sound intervention, composition of electroacoustic and experimental music, and video production. He has participated in most of the sound art, electroacoustic and experimental music festivals in Mexico in the last years as Radar, Visiones Sonoras, Transitio MX, Instrumenta, Muestra Internacional de Arte Sonoro, Mutek, Interface and SONOM. Also he has performed and his works have been played at different festivals and concerts in England, Spain, France, Austria and Colombia. Recently Israel won the Award of Distinction of Ars Electronica 2007 in the Digital Musics category.

ESP

Israel Martínez (Guadalajara, México 1979) es artista sonoro, compositor - músico empírico y licenciado en ciencias de la comunicación. Su trabajo se desarrolla en diferentes áreas: instalación e intervención sonora, composición de música experimental – electroacústica y producción de video.

Ha participado en la mayoría de festivales de arte sonoro, música electroacústica y música electrónica experimental de México en los últimos años como Radar, Visiones Sonoras, Mutek, Muestra Internacional de Arte Sonoro, Instrumenta, Interface y SONOM, además de la Bienal Internacional de Arte Electrónico Transitio 02 MX y uno de los encuentros más importantes de artes electrónicas a nivel mundial, el Festival Ars Electronica de Austria, en donde recibió en 2007 el Premio de Distinción en la categoría de Músicas Digitales por su obra “Mi vida”.

Ha presentado obra y tocado en vivo en ciudades de México, Inglaterra, Francia, España y Austria. Su principal enfoque artístico e investigativo es la relación del sonido con la sociedad y sus entornos.