On The Ghost, Martel opens his Zaire project with a track that feels more like excavation than composition. Layering Donato Dozzy-esque polyrhythms with hand-played percussion and synthetic textures that seem to sweat under their own humidity, the piece unfolds as a slow-motion descent into the sonic underbrush of the Congo Rainforest.
It’s a stark introduction to Zaire, an EP that positions itself in opposition to the polished piety of gentrified Afro-house and the generic uplift of festival-ready “world music.” Instead, Martel traces the political fault lines running through the sonic landscape: colonial extraction, corporate plunder, and the uneasy persistence of life amid systemic violence.
Martel comes at this from an oblique angle. A former architect turned composer, his path cuts across film, underground parties, and the gaming world—most recently scoring Bleak Faith: Forsaken. That breadth shows in his sense of scale and texture, but it’s his ideological commitment that gives The Ghost its force.
With the The Ghost landing 15 August, we caught up with Martel to discuss the themes he’s keen to explore.
There’s a rough, off-grid feel to the percussion on The Ghost—like it’s resisting quantisation. Was that about keeping a human touch, or something more conceptual?
It’s definitely about giving a bit of a human feel to the digital era of sound, as trends that have made it very easy to make great tracks have somehow brought about a lazy feel to tracks – things snap perfetly between each other, and there’s almost a loss of unpredictability, or surprise if you will. Hand-crafting at least a few elements when producing digitally gives things a bit of soul – the imperfect.
Sonically, Zaire doesn’t sit comfortably in any one corner of the techno landscape. Do you see it as part of a scene or lineage, or was the aim to stay outside of that?
The idea was definitely to stay out, since I find it a missed opportunity for people to shape their sound into their own thing in an era when all these sound tools are available. It’s a pity that if a massive label such as Drumcode shifts into a direction, half the producers in the scene follow it in lockstep, or if a summer hit breaks out with a certain flavor, the majority obsesses over replicating that. I’m more of a fan of those auteur approaches, so that was case here as well.
The drum programming feels intentionally uneven—loops that never quite land the same way twice. Is that about creating tension, or about breaking the listener’s sense of structure?
Both really, and most importantly, it’s also a way of trying to dial back on overproduction. Things can be sculpted well and carry a lot of detail without being force-framed into perfection by workstations and algorithms.
The textures in The Ghost are dense but never cluttered. What’s your process for balancing synthetic and organic elements without one overpowering the other?
There’s a bit of Werner Herzog here, where I wanted to orchestrate chaos if that isn’t too arrogant – to give a sense of rhythm and a club-friendly pulse to elements that when found in nature or in reality, are in a way overwhelming and sonically, all-enveloping, especially the sounds of the Congo rainforest etc.
There’s no obvious drop or payoff moment in the track. Were you deliberately pushing against club convention, or was that just how the track naturally unfolded?
I wanted it to be more of a meditation, and since it’s the most political piece on the album, other pieces are there with more traditional climaxes and drops to give the whole album a kind of ebb and flow to the experience. Hypnosis-wise however, I’m sure that if timed right, a piece like the Ghost sits right at home in that dense intimacy of a good club around 2 a.m.
You’ve worked in film and games, but techno often lives in the club. Do you think differently about space and pacing when making something for listening rather than dancing?
Of course, because with a game, as with literature, one spends a lot of time traversing the world, not necessarily engaging with peaks too frequently, so the music is better when it breathes more rather than fights for your attention. Film however is a different beast, and due to its linear nature, music can literally redefine everything about the atmosphere if placed well, or not! I like to bring a bit of that in my mixes, sets and now, productions too!
Field recordings seem to show up in your productions. Are these captured yourself, or sourced? And what’s your thinking behind how they’re used?
Some are captured during my travels there, some are samples from films or documentaries, others are smart VSTs and intentional arrangement. As I idolized Liam Howlett as a teenager, I think the principle of anything works if it works well is what I stick to – as long as the general flavor has a contextual sense. Sometimes it does hurt my ears if I hear a great, dark acid beat that is then pepper by a random AI vocal line that’s part of an overused samplepack, so I tend to avoid that by relying on my own stuff.
A lot of producers are drawing on African sounds right now, often in a surface-level way. How do you navigate that tension between influence, appropriation, and personal connection?
From a sociopolitical perspective, I am happy that African culture is being celebrated, and I enjoy witnessing the success of the SA scene on a global level, the recognition they are finally getting internationally – but on a personal level, I also find it necessary to engage with the other sides of Africa’s reality as well. Some art should be there to celebrate life and joy, other art to celebrate beauty or strengthen the heart in painful weather – but sometimes as is the case here, it’s just as important to raise awareness and talk about the dark truths of our realities and consumerist habits that cost us money, but cost others much more than that.
