- A storming return to form that ranks among the Dutch artist's finest work.
- 2007 was a turning point for Martijn Deijkers. After a decade of throwing drum & bass parties called Red Zone in Eindhoven, Deijkers and his partners ended the series with one last event, Red Zone Is Dead! That same year, Deijkers released a landmark EP, Broken, on Marcus Intalex's Revolve:r label, giving us the genre-defining sound that he and others—2562, Peverelist, Cosmin TRG—would forge in dubstep's wake. Two years later, Deijkers released his debut album, Great Lengths, on his own label, 3024. It was another landmark release, further consolidating Martyn's luminous sound and prefiguring a style of hardcore continuum-inspired house and techno that's common today.
Today Deijkers is an established international artist. Through his label, he's helped cultivate the curveball sounds of others––Mosca, Jacques Greene and Marcus Intalex, as Trevino, included––while honing his own via solo and collaborative albums. Deijkers' output has ranged from the rude rollers on Ghost People to the poppy analogue house of Virginia's Fierce For The Night. Voids is Deijkers fifth album and first for Ostgut Ton, a label with which he's been associated since 2010's "Miniluv."
Last year, Deijkers suffered a near-fatal heart attack. Voids is the product of the artist turning to music during his recovery, specifically to his origins and motivations to produce. That's why, if you're familiar with Deijkers' earlier catalogue, songs like "Manchester," "Mind Rain" and "Nya" will give you a pleasant feeling of déjà vu. Deijkers' hallmarks come to the fore: his nimble dub-engineered rhythms, those warm, rainy-day atmospheres—as he once described them to Martin Clark—and a 2-step lilt that offsets the swampy dubstep swagger. Voids contains some of Deijkers' finest work in this vein. "Nya" is a lurching junglist riff with squelchy low-end. "Mind Rain" serves up ominous techno futurism. "Manchester" pays homage to the city it's named after in fine swinging fashion. It also memorialises Deijkers' friendship with Marcus Intalex—the big talent alluded to in the sample—who passed away last year.
Some of Voids's second half has more of what you'd imagine Deijkers playing in places like Panorama Bar, where he's a resident. That's especially true of the warm, woody drums, plush dream chords and melancholic synth lines of "Why." "Cutting Tone" is the album's raucous banger, a tough, paranoid piece of UK garage that pairs neatly with "World Gate"'s sinewy, soulful house. The huge, shuddering breakbeats of "Voids Two" round off the record, which might nod to another of Deijkers' inspirations, Metalheadz.
Last year, Deijkers released GL Outtakes, a remastered collection of tracks written between 2008 and 2009. It was a fitting primer for Voids, which in many ways circles back to this formative period in his career. But his latest LP isn't nostalgic. If anything, Voids proves Deijkers is as comfortable in the here and now as he's ever been.
Tracklist01. Voids One
02. Manchester
03. Mind Rain
04. Nya
05. Why
06. Try To Love You
07. Cutting Tone
08. World Gate
09. Voids Two