Musician and record producer Kevin Martin is best known for recording and performing as The Bug, however, has been and continues to be involved in a variety of other musical projects including: GOD, Techno Animal, Ice, Curse of the Golden Vampire and King Midas Sound.
Early musical groundings with bands like Joy Division, Sex Pistols, Captain Beefheart, Birthday Party, and Throbbing Gristle sparked his initial interest in music, as Martin describes, “It seemed like everything that I hated about English conservative monoculture was being burned and turned upside down through music…Post-punk music was tearing up rule books and asking questions of everything, particularly structure in terms of music, art, politics, you know, the law.”
Martin first began making music because he was attracted to the DIY punk aesthetic. He first worked with a four-track recorder and effects pedal. Moving in to the 90s London music scene, he began to sync his ears up to the genres of dub, jazzcore, ragga, industrial hip hop, dancehall, and dubstep. Equipped with his aversion to conservative musical structure he comments how discovering genres such as Dub “seemed to tear everything to shreds, burn it up, and rearrange the embers.” The punk-meets-dance music combination is one which continually elevates The Bug’s artistry in whatever musical endeavour he explores.
A previous collab with Dylan Carlson of American drone-metalists Earth titled The Bug vs Earth saw its live debut at Supersonic Festival 2015 and this year we bring you yet another Superspecial, Supersonic collab…this time with Justin Broadrick. In the mid 80s Broadrick was writing and recording guitar for Side One of the Napalm Death’s debut album, Scum which now celebrates it’s 30 years on this earth. Since then he has cemented himself as a pioneer in the Metal scene with Birmingham band Godflesh, who’s innovative music is widely regarded as a foundational influence on industrial metal and post-metal.
“Justin Broadrick has been, and continues to be, many things. Now based in his north Wales farm, the Birmingham native has thirty plus years of performing and recording under his belt, exploring the world of extreme music (a concept he has his own considered definition of) from feedback blur overload to the deepest of dub-inspired crushes to serene contemplation. Kaleidoscopic might be one way to describe his work, in how elements rearrange to create new, unexpected patterns. His latest efforts include a new live release under the guise of Final, his collaborative album as Jesu with Sun Kil Moon, and Rise Above, his latest album as JK Flesh.”
CLICK HERE FOR BROADRICK IN CONVERSATION WITH THE QUIETUS
The Bug & JK Flesh together were Techno-animal, that was the past, now they are Zonal, this is the future! A worldwide premiere for this new project at Supersonic 2017.
