"It's a big corporation and you're dealing with people that work in cubicles and their minds are cubicle. That's how they think," said Martin. "It's very hard to get original, different ideas through the corporate gauntlet. At a certain point you realize I've kind of grown beyond what I can do here. I had the money and I had the will power- actually, sometimes it's not the will power, it's the stubbornness. I was like, 'The hell with this,' I'm just going to start my own company."
Martin has been busy with more than just finishing his own album. He's also been recording and producing for other Fast Horse albums slated for release this year.
"I actually just did four records back to back that I produced," he said. "One of them is another Tuatara record but it's really, it's Coleman Barks, the famed Sufi poet. He wrote The Essential Rumi and he's sort of the world's foremost translator of Rumi's poetry."
Tuatara, which includes Martin and R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, released two albums last year, East of the Sun and West of the Moon which had 30 songs between them. They've now recorded music for another 30 songs that blend Barks' poetry with Tuatara music, but Martin said the final album will probably be pared back to the best 14 or 15.
Another Tuatara alum will be releasing an album this year. Trumpet player Dave Carter will be releasing his debut solo album.
"He's been around for years and he's played on everybody else's record but we finally did his own record," said Martin. "It's just beautiful. It straddles the line between Chet Baker and the second era of Miles Davis Quintet. Beautiful melodies, great textures and rhythms. It's actually the record I'm most excited about right now."
The fourth album Martin helped craft that will be released this year is a record he did with an old friend of his, DJ Meg Man. As you might expect, this one will have an electronic vibe to it unlike his own solo record and those he's done with Barks/Tuatara and Clark.
"He does these electronic compositions and his albums really kind of sounds like a slice of New York," said Martin. "There's Puerto Rican rhythms, there's Cuban rhythms, and there's even some 'gangster' rhythms; the stuff you hear on a lot of hip hop records. He just has this way of composing and sculpting the music into being these sort of visual tapestries of life in New York."
As interesting as an album that sounds like New York might be, that's only part of the story with DJ Meg Man.
"He's a music teacher," Martin explained. "He works in the New York public schools with kids that are on the edge. He does some amazing work teaching music to these kids."
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