Martin Buttrich has been involved in such a large number of productions since his bedroom beginnings in Hanover/ Germany in 1995, it would give even the most eager of train spotters a difficult time.
Like a large chunk of German youth that was getting into music and clubbing in the early nineties, he saw Techno as his biggest inspiration. An experimental, electronic dance groove that he immediately connected with. It cost him his relationship at home and he left to start the long slow trail of working shit jobs to buy essential pieces of equipment with which to start creating. His first release came on the dark trancey Hamburg label Litime, where he and then partner Andy Bolleshon remixed their first piece "Seeing is Believing". It was through this that he was spotted by the then unknown Hamburg Tunnel Club resident Timo Maas who released on the same label. Timo immediately recognized Martin and Andy's talents and they began to write together releasing on a number of labels including Casseyopea, Lakota and 3 Lanka. By now the trio were beginning to churn out a blend of highly danceable, quirky trance records and would continue to work together until the present day, albeit without Andy who departed in 2001. The artist Timo Maas began to dominate dance floors with Martin's productions. They began to slow down losing if not the trancey techno sounds, then certainly the pace, and Martin began experimenting with breaks, creating the record (Timo Maas "Der Schieber" Funking for Hope in New York Mix) that by their own admission gave birth to The Plump DJs and managed to galvanise an entire breaks scene just as it was beginning to emerge, finishing the job with his productions as Mad Dogs and the Lakota/Planet Breakz releases Better Make Room, Sudden Journey, while simultaneously becoming the king of the UK Garage scene with his mix under Timo's moniker of Azzido Da Bass Doom’s Night which sold 250,000 on vinyl in the UK alone. Parallel to this Martin and Andy were working at the other end of the dance music spectrum delivering high end Italo House for labels such as AM:PM, Twisted and Defected as Sounds of Life. There were many other releases under so many names we'll never be able to list them here, some so obscure they were meant not to be found. Two that should be noted here though are Orinoko who's Mama Konda became one of the biggest sellers of 1997 and started a trend of Martin delivering a record in one name and remixing it himself under another and also Kinteic A.T.O.M an outfit who legend has it made all their percussion noises from a recording of the sound of the bridge door opening on the Starship Enterprise.
This takes us to 2000 and beyond where the Timo Maas project is signed as an album artist and Martin begins to craft songs with live musicians for singers as high profile as Kelis, Finley Quaye on album 1 (Loud - Perfecto/Mushroom) scoring a top ten hit and Kelis again along with Brian Molko, Neneh Cherry for album two (Pictures- Warners) as well as working with Dave Gahan on a reworking of "Enjoy The Silence". Whilst the Timo project was going from strength to strength Martin also worked and wrote an album track for Placebo, delivered Music for the Film “Creep” and started working with underground house dj Loco Dice.
Loco Dice productions began to surface on Four:twenty and Superstar Recordings and took the dark and twisted sound developed for Timo and with Dice's influence stripped it right back to produce a fiercely isolated groove that has come to embody the dominant sound on dance floors in 2006. Loco Dice singles on Josh Wink’s Ovum, Richie Hawtin's Minus and Sven Vath's Cocoon have made Martin Buttrich and Loco Dice productions the number 1 sound right across the world and they are both on the eve of a move to New York in order to start soaking up the city's influence that they then want to translate into an album.
So what about Martin himself? In between all these amazing releases he has found time to do stuff under his own name. Autumn 2006 sees the release of four new tracks on Steve Bug's highly prized imprint, Pokerflat, and another single on the absolutely legendary and truly old school label Planet E run by Paperclip People wizard Carl Craig.
The fact that techno and house music’s legends are queuing up to release his material says it all, and it's a goal most of us would be happy to achieve on it's own without all the other successes he’s had.
