Strata Frames

Biography

Electric Birds is what Bay Area musician Mike Martinez calls his solo project. "... 'Electric Birds' is plural because I don't think of myself as an 'electric bird', rather the sounds themselves are the 'electric birds'. I'm fascinated by both nature and technology, and Electric Birds is a reflection of that ..." Martinez' early bands included John Henry West and Cars Get Crushed; the latter released full-lengths on the Goldenrod and Mod Lang labels. Martinez has owned and operated the Deluxe r...

Electric Birds is what Bay Area musician Mike Martinez calls his solo project. "... 'Electric Birds' is plural because I don't think of myself as an 'electric bird', rather the sounds themselves are the 'electric birds'. I'm fascinated by both nature and technology, and Electric Birds is a reflection of that ..."

Martinez' early bands included John Henry West and Cars Get Crushed; the latter released full-lengths on the Goldenrod and Mod Lang labels. Martinez has owned and operated the Deluxe record label since 1995, and the imprint has accumulated a diverse roster of quality releases by the likes of Matmos (whom Martinez has collaborated with) and Satisfact. In 2000, Martinez released his solo debut as Electric Birds, an excellent album that combined computer processing with more conventional instrumentation and included production contributions from Matmos.

Eight landscapes are painted with vivid electronic colors on "Panorama", the second album from Electric Birds (AKA Mike Martinez). Rich atmospheres come to life with a heady brew of modernist organic techno, where natural and synthetic dust and debris swirl atop hypnotic backdrops spiked with sublime rhythms and blissful emotive textures. Shadows of processed guitar chords resonate against shards of reverberating clicks while elsewhere, rattling hand drums and finger pianos drop like percussive rain... Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.