Biography
Mike Martinez has served as co-owner of the Deluxe record label since 1995, and Electric Birds functions as his solo outlet. Over the years the imprint has built a varied catalog of strong releases featuring Matmos, with whom Martinez has also collaborated, as well as Disc, Blectum from Blechdom, and Satisfact. His earlier groups were John Henry West and Cars Get Crushed, the latter of which issued full-lengths on Goldenrod and Mod Lang. The first Electric Birds album arrived in 2000, a notable work that merged computer processing with conventional instrumentation and carried production contributions from Matmos. After the 2001 follow-up Panorama and the collection of EPs titled Strata Frames issued by Belgium’s U-Cover, he placed Electric Birds with Mille Plateaux, the leading European label devoted to experimental techno. Its first full-length project for the imprint, Gradations, surfaced in April of 2002.