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Martel’s new album Zaire takes the Congo as a starting point, but avoids easy gestures around identity or representation. Instead, it draws on personal connections, field recordings, and a background in architecture to build something dense, physical and politically charged. The rhythms are rough-edged, the sound design deliberately uneven.
In this conversation, he speaks plainly about colonial legacy, commercial sanitisation, and why he’s more interested in recording real spaces than chasing a clean mix.
Zaire feels like it deliberately unsettles both sonically and politically. What drew you to the Congo as a focal point, and how did you approach translating that history into sound without falling into the trap of representation?
Frankly, as my life went on, I kept encountering immigrants in similar circles such as myself, espcially when life was on the downside. Chances are, some very resilient people who also have the kindest of hearts ended up being Congolese in my case, and learning more about how and why they ended up in such different parts of the world only sparked my curiosity further. Looking under the carpet of contemporary European history, I found what has been hid quite well and this really took me on a deep dive down the rabbit-hole in a sense, that has formed a great understanding, compassion and solidarity for the position of the Congo. I think when one is deeply involved with no real gain to be received, representation is no longer an issue.
You describe the album as an “audio-political meditation.” Can you talk about the specific political frameworks or histories that shaped the record, and how you see them manifesting in the actual composition?
Slavery, imperialism, corporate chains that plague the Congo today, all these have helped the instable heart of the country to devolve to a point where it is probably the most chaotic and dangerous place in the world as it stands. In that atmosphere, children mine cobalt and diamonds while grown-ups go to war, and often, the exact reverse takes place as well. This is all a legacy of Africa’s abuse, but that abuse had culminated even then right there in the rainforest of the world. These have been given sonic space with tact and care, but also detail and cinematic drama that serves to involve the listener, not just entertain – and electronic music lends itself well to this end when used in such a way.
There’s a raw tactility to the percussion on Zaire; it feels deliberately imperfect, almost resistant to the grid. What role did live recording and rhythmic unpredictability play in the process?
As a general musician of sorts, a guitar player and singer and what not, even if I cherish the unpredictability of jamming away, I really wanted the production here to feel dense and tight in a club sense, even if the soundscape is mostly organic and real. What gives it all 3D depth however is the recordings of the spaces themselves. Back as an architecture student at the UEL in East London, one of my favorite exercises was recording spaces through sound and mapping them out later by instinct, using the sound as a compass. A lot of that is here in this album as well.
You’ve positioned Zaire as a response to the polished sheen of Afro-house and ‘festival-ready world music.’ How do you navigate that line between drawing from African sonic traditions and pushing back against the commercialisation of them?
Openness is required, and if one can accept that American or European culture can readily offer grim drum and bass, edgy, street-style trap, grime, metal and a marketization of fury and danger as an aesthetic as well – then why does this not happen with international music?
The evil we have committed in Africa is hidden under a carpet for which the soundtrack is happy, sunshine safari themes and positive ceremonial vocals. I assure you, there’s greatness in their own roughness as well, and whoever’s listened to a contemporary shaman dressed in a football jersey and old sneakers as he recites the names of his tribe’s protector spirits, knows that there’s an intensity and punk to experiencing Africa that has nothing to do with resorts and malls with colorful dresses. Die Antwoord scratched the surface of this for the global audience, but there’s a whole world waiting to be discovered there.
There’s a strong architectural quality to the album: dense structures, controlled chaos, immersive atmospheres. How does your background in architecture inform your approach to building a track?
Quite a bit. Systems, form, cyclical design, segments inform other segments, and in general, musical decisions are almost never emotional impulse and almost always curation of tasteful experiences – regardless of genre. So yeah, the architecture is there all the way!
You’ve worked across very different mediums, scoring for video games, underground parties, film. What habits or sensibilities from those worlds found their way into Zaire?
Humility and empathy, and I don’t say this in the influencer way. I say it in the way where, after meeting people who come from very harsh realities, I really appreciate even further the world I come from. The ability to make music, to build audiences, go to parties, befriend everyone, enjoy life in the romanticist sense – these all have made their way into the album as, even if the provocative aspects of the album may seem spiteful, it is after all a work of love, for a people and an entire culture.
“The Ghost” felt more like a process of excavation than arrangement. Does that reflect your broader philosophy of sound design? Are you more interested in unearthing than constructing?
Not really, but it did feel necessary for the theme of this album. Being my first outside of underground and CD/Tape/Vinyl only circles, it felt important to make something that is real and analog and organic as much as our era allows. The guitar was my first love anyway, and learning to rely on the room for your sound as much as the instrument is something I really wanted to bring into the album here since it completely lacks from the surgically precise supermarket mediocrity that is around 90% of contemporary electronic music anyways.
Given the themes of resource extraction and exploitation, did you feel a responsibility in how you sourced samples, field recordings or instrumentation? How do you engage with questions of authorship and appropriation in a project like this?
Yes, but I am aware of the world and time I live in and I went buccaneer when necessary. Cutting corners however is fine even according the to the great Peter Zumthor, as long as the grander whole is served adequately. In this case here, I feel even the focus on all the warlords and mercenaries in the samples of the album is but the holding up of a mirror to ourselves. After all, if we too came from generations of wage-slaves and forced laborers for the wealth of foreigners, wouldn’t we also as they say in the rainforest, pick up arms and head for the bush?
