It's been almost 2 year since the release of Martinez debut album, Internal Space, on Out of Orbit. During those two years Martinez's sound has developed and progressed into the more mind bending and tweaked out fields of techno music. More stripped down and focused on a fewer elements rather then a lot of melodies and hook lines. Martinez sound nowadays would fit more into what you would call minimal techno. With this development of his sound he started his re:connected project, which is a platform set up for him to be able to explore the fields of this genre even more. Through this project he brought his interpretation of this sound out to the people. The first two releases got massive feedback from major players on today's dance music scene, such as Ricardo Villalobos, Miss Kittin, John Digweed, Dominik Eulberg, Richie Hawtin and Sven Vaeth. With such a success Martinez decided to go in the studio and to fully focus on this new project. After a few more month in the studio experimenting we're now pleased to present a brand new full length album from Martinez, entitled A Chemical Imbalance. Martinez chose to present the CD version of this album as a continuous mix, as he felt that it would give it a much better flow when you hear the full album, although the mix still keeps the individual feeling of each track. As Martinez puts it in his own words: I always preferred to listen to Techno music as a mix without breaks in between the tracks and as this surely is a Techno album I decided to mix the songs together for the CD version. Also I was happy to be able to combine my passion for DJ mixing with my first album of only my own productions. A Chemical Imbalance is mainly driven by the trademark sound of re:connected. You'll find it in tracks such as Tuna Belly and La Macchina, with their rolling hypnotic rhythm and bleepy metallic sounds. The album also includes the two mini-hits from the first 12 inch singles, Sinus Wave and Land-crab, which have a more shufle driven beat and strong off-keypads. But for a change Martinez also adds to his album some elements from his early influences of deep house, with the track, Lowdown, which is clearly a tribute to the classic Chicago imprint, Guidance Recordings. Its lush and laidback pads lay out a deep but uplifting atmosphere in the otherwise dark and tweaked-out soundscape of the album. There are also some trippy experimental dub grooves on this record in tracks like, The Turtle-march, with that weird voice coming in and it's tripped out percussion groove flowing on top of a heavy sub bass. So it's an album that offer lots of different moods and swings between genres like ambient, minimal, techno, deep house and tripped out dub elements. Although the mix of the CD keeps a nice flow through out the whole play time of the record.

review by: re:connected