BONA2018 | Best Producer: Justin Martin

If things have been quiet on the musical front from Justin Martin, that’s because the beloved producer/DJ is still floating on cloud nine following the release of his 2016 sophomore album, ‘Hello Clouds’, hands down one of the best albums of that year. More than two years since its release, ‘Hello Clouds’ still has us smiling and dancing to its airy melodies, bouncing house beats and downtempo beauty. 

But Martin is never one to rest on his laurels, no matter how many he’s stacked up over the years. In early 2017, he kept the beats floating high in the sky with the ‘Hello Clouds Remixes’ album, which topped the Beatport charts and featured remixes from the top brass in the business, like Soul Clap, Chris Lorenzo, Redlight and more of his DJ homies. He rounded out the year with huge festival plays at Coachella, HARD Summer, Brooklyn Electronic Music Festival and Snowglobe.

This year is already stacking up to be a massive run for Martin. In February, he kicked off a new residency at weirdo venue Meow Wolf in Santa Fe, NM. That’s on top of a packed show schedule that included another run at Coachella this past April, a performance at Movement last month and a stop at Splash House this month. 

As one of the original founders of Dirtybird, this year’s Best of North America winners for Best Label, Martin remains at the forefront of the imprint’s ongoing development. This year, the Dirtybird crew expanded its signature Dirtybird Campout boutique festival to the East Coast for the first time ever since launching in 2015. Next month, Martin leads the Dirtybird Players on a main stage takeover at Northern Nights in NorCal. 

If you’ve been keeping up with Martin on Instagram, you may have noticed he recently posted a few pics of himself in his brand-new studio with the teasing tagline, “Back at it...” We had to plug the man himself of what’s to come. 

“Now that my studio is built,” Justin tells DJ Mag, “I can finally put the finishing touches on a lot of this unreleased material that you consistently hear me playing in my sets. Nothing makes me happier than making music, and for the past year, I have been absolutely itching to get back into the studio, so you better believe the creative floodgates are now open.”