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Joel Martin was born with music in his blood. He grew up on a diet of Donna Summer, ELO, John Barry, The Beach Boys and David Bowie (The list could go on forever so I’ll stop here).
In his teenage years Hip Hop struck a chord and Joel found himself not only craving the new music coming out of the USA but it’s deeper roots. It wasn’t long before he was digging for funk, film soundtracks, jazz, disco, rock and everything in-between.
As the years passed with music becoming more of an obsession, it lead to Joel’s first outing as a tastemaker, curating (with friend Mark B) the landmark compilation for B.B.E. Records ‘Bite Hard’ in 1998, an excursion into rare and unheard library music that has since been sampled by Rap gods Jay Z, Ja Rule and Kool G Rap etc. This was also the first time Joel worked on a project with The UK’s oldest and finest Production Music company ‘de Wolfe’ (more of them later)…
In 2001 Joel started the 'Heroes & Villains' label with Matt Edwards a.k.a. ‘Radio Slave’, and released the first old school “Disco-Rap” album, 'Harlem World The Sound of the Big Apple Rappin'. This long deleted cd was tied in with an exhibition at the 'Dazed & Confused' Magazine gallery and featured the photography of NYC legend Jamel Shabazz. Matt and Joel also took the exhibition to L.A. where they deejayed at the Hollywood launch party.
Never one to remain quiet for very long Joel recorded the now infamous 'Esoteric Disco' mix under the pseudonym 'DJ Zeus', which explored many untapped genres within it’s 80 minutes. Originally only 20 copies were given to friends and family and one even ended up in DJ Harvey’s Venice Beach Mailbox. The cult leader liked the mix so much he even played cuts from the mix in his famous ‘Sarcastic’ party sets…
Due to popular demand Joel pressed a few more cds for his pals at ‘Sounds Of The Universe’ in London:
http://www.soundsoftheuniverse.com/releases/?id=11467
In 2004 a 15 year-old dream was fulfilled when Joel produced and compiled the critically acclaimed compilation ‘Dawn of the Dead – The Unreleased Score’, featuring the original library music cues used in the legendary Zombie flick, for ‘Trunk Records’:
http://www.trunkrecords.com/turntable/dawn.shtml
Later that year Joel used some of these tracks when supervising background music for the legendary British zombie-comedy film ‘Shaun of the Dead’
In 2005 Joel started producing music with Matt Edwards a.k.a. ‘Radio Slave’ resulting in 3 cult releases for the NYC indie label ‘Whatever We Want Records’ as ‘Quiet Village’ and the following year found the time to
co-produce 2 tracks with Matt for his ‘Rekid’ album ‘Made in Menorca’ (Soul Jazz Records), and…
produce the LTD edition ‘New Wave’ mix for the 25th Anniversary of Nike Shoes
Joel recently completed the highly anticipated 'Quiet Village' album with Matt Radio Slave, which was released in may 2008 to a plethora of excellent reviews. Tracks are being licensed all over the world and the guys are particularly pleased that fashion house ‘Channel’ decided to use ‘Circus of horror’ on their website and as an in-store soundtrack.
The duo have also been busy remixing everyone from the Gorillaz to Francois Kevorkian, Black Devil Disco Club, Pacifika, and Allez Allez.
The release of ‘Silent Movie’ saw Joel & Matt tour The World during summer 2008. Gigs included The Mutek Festival (Canada), Deep Space (NYC), End-Up (San Francisco), Liquid Room (Tokyo), The Big Chill/Glastonbury (UK), Oxygen Festival (Dublin), Sonar Festival (Spain), La Flesche D’Or (Paris), Lowlands Festival (Holland) & many more…
In September 2008 Joel was lucky enough to be picked as a guest speaker at this year’s prestigious ‘Red Bull Music Academy’ where he was interviewed about his career and particularly love of library music. You can watch the whole session here:
http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/video-archive/lectures/joel_martin_library_of_pleasant_horrors
Joel continues to DJ worldwide and this year alone has played at many respected clubs across the Globe including…
Plastic People/East Village/Big Chill House/Fabric/Sosho – London
Milk Club/Cay Club – Tokyo
Cielo/APT – New York City
18th St Lounge – Washington DC
Tigersushi Party – Paris
Red Rum Club – Helsinki
Expo XXI Centre – Poland
Zukunft – Vienna
Living Room FM – Switzerland
Berns Club/Fredisgarten (Stockholm)/Caviar Club (Gothenburg) – Sweden
Watergate Club – Berlin/Munich/Dussledorf – Germany
Café Capital – Antwerp
His selecting skills have also been requested at such prestigious events as Eric Clapton’s 60th birthday, the James Bond “Quantum of Solace’ launch party in Warsaw, cult Kraut-Rock innovator Manuel Gottsching’s 55th Birthday party in Berlin and the Stussy 25th anniversary party at Fabric. In addition, Joel is working with old friends 'De Wolfe Music', producing and compiling unreleased soundtrack material from the 'Monty Python' T.V. series to cult Hong Kong martial arts film mavericks 'The Shaw Brothers' (“Kung Fu Super Sounds”), as well as a sequel to 'Bite Hard' (“Bite Harder”)Watch this space! Check out this site:
http://www.dewolfeshop.com/
Joel has also started ‘Moscovitch Music’ a label dedicated to releasing long lost film scores and obscure sounds from around the globe. Confirmed projects include the unissued score to British Gangster flick ‘Villain” (1972), starring Richard Burton, the proto hip-hop easy listening funk soundtrack to “The Beast Must Die”, probably the only Blaxploitation Horror Murder-Mystery movie to come out of England in the 1970s, Norman J Warren’s cult horror masterpieces “Prey” & “Terror” and much more….
http://www.myspace.com/moscovitchmusic
Recently Joel has been working on a new project called ‘Churchill’s Leopards’ with Jonathan Burnip aka ‘Capracara’ (DFA). Their first composition ‘Hokushin’ was released on the Polish Chopin tribute album ‘Astigmatic’ (also featuring Morgan Geist, Daniel Wang, The Glimmer Twins etc) and has been championed by DJs Giles Peterson on his BBC Radio 1 ‘Worldwide’ Show, and legendary Chill-out maestro Mixmaster Morris…..
http://www.rockserwis.pl:8080/serwis.do?menu=main&l=2&pid=100597
Joel was photographed and interviewed in the December 2008 issue of
‘i-D Magazine’ for their ‘Disco DJ’ Article alongside David Mancuso, DJ Harvey, Gerry Rooney, Soft Rocks etc
In January 2009 QV have been asked by legendary DJ Gilles Peterson to open his famous ‘Worldwide Awards’ ceremony at London’s Cargo Club….
That’s all for now!
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