Roger Martinez Crafts a Deep-Dive Journey for Balance Selections…
Roger Martinez is a distinctive voice in electronic music, known for deep, progressive trance-influenced DJ sets and detailed productions. Shaped by Amsterdam’s club scene in the late ’90s and early 2000s, his long-form sets often move across genres, using 4-deck mixing to build cohesive, evolving journeys.
With releases from Lost & Found to Sudbeat and Plattenbank, Martinez continues to explore subtle textures and rhythmic depth, an intention you can hear clearly on his own Higher States imprint.
On this Balance Selections mix, Martinez flexes with an impressive 90-minutes ride through forward-thinking prog. Featuring tracks from Maze28, Amháin & EMPHI and Dowden & Mazayr, this is a hypnotic drift worth surrendering to.
Tracklist
1. Cid Inc – Days Like These {Replug}
2. Ercos Blanka – Heresy (Dovim Remix) {Sound Avenue}
3. ID – ID
4. Federico Barga & Brian David – Rinkler {Mango Alley}
5. Subnode – Vine Spirit (Rossie Remix) {Sound Avenue}
6. Maze 28 pres. Futura City – Next Day Before (Freedo Mosho & M28 Remix) {Electronic Groove}
7. Amháin, EMPHI – Hekla (Original Mix) {Balance Music}
8. Hobin Rude – Lunar Bloom {HIGHER STATES}
9. Ra Duh ft. Hadrian – Sigma {HIGHER STATES}
10. ID – ID
11. Roger Martinez – Portal {HIGHER STATES}
12. ID – ID
13. Dowden & Mazayr – Deflator (Montw Remix) {Mango Alley}
14. ID – ID
15. ID – ID
16. M.O.S. – Nanda (Roger Martinez Remix) {Mango Alley}
17. ID – ID
18. Cloaked – Chaos Is A Ladder {HIGHER STATES}
19. ID – ID
Name: Roger Martinez
Location: The Netherlands
Alias/Producer name: Roger Martinez / Horizontal Excursions
Labels affiliated with: HIGHER STATES, Lost & Found, Mango Alley, UV, Plattenbank
I was aurally focused from a very young age. At four years old, I was spinning everything from Deep Purple to Maria Callas on my mom’s vinyl player. My mother often had music on in the house, classical music, Bob Dylan, The Doors…
It had to be the incredible soundtracks from cartoons like Ulysses 31 and all those iconic Japanese-American animations from the 1980s. But the defining moment came when I was nine years old and saw a commercial for Turn Up The Bass: House Party Vol. 1.
The sounds, the ecstatic crowd, the flashing lights—it was like a portal had opened. I begged my mom for the CD, and from that moment on, electronic music became my home.
Around the time I turned 16, I started going to clubs and experiencing sets by Dutch DJ legends like Marcello, Remy, Dimitri, Spider Willem, and later Carl Cox, Sasha and Digweed.
It wasn’t just about dancing — it felt like accessing a higher plane of experience through a deep collective ritual.
Legendary club nights such as Chemistry and festivals like Dance Valley and Innercity were, for many years, my favorite places to go to dance and listen to incredible music and they completely laid the foundations of my vision as a DJ and producer.
I have to give credit to a guy named Peter Horrevorts, whom I met while studying music production at the Fontys Rockacademy in the Netherlands. His music and sound were—and still are—among the biggest sources of inspiration for me.
He was so far ahead of his time, and honestly, ahead of every other electronic music producer I’ve ever heard. A truly gifted individual. He couldn’t handle the pressures of the producer/DJ life and made a conscious decision to walk away and pursue something else, which only deepened my respect for him.
You can still find his tracks online, but I haven’t heard anything new from him in years.
I recently discovered a guy named Max Corbacho through the excellent Drone Zone radio station by SomaFM. His ‘Splendid Labyrinths” album is an Ambient masterpiece.
Since I’ve lived a nomadic lifestyle for many years, I’ve always used a so-called “in-the-box” setup—so I wouldn’t have to drag around hundreds of kilos of equipment. A defining aspect of my sound is definitely the combination of Universal Audio plugins and U-he synths.
Add to that a pair of Dynaudio monitors and my faithful RME Fireface 400 (now kept alive with three adapters just to make it work on a new iMac!).
My DJ setup is based around Traktor. So far, I haven’t fallen in love with CDJs, simply because I haven’t had the time or opportunity to really practice with them.
I’m currently involved in a very fruitful and inspiring collaboration with Simos Tagias, which has already given birth to some amazing tracks. On July 10th, a remix I did for M.O.S. will be released on Mango Alley. Another remix—this time for Paul Deep—is set to appear in the coming months on Proton Music.
I also have more original material in the pipeline, likely to be released on my own imprint, HIGHER STATES, including one of the first tracks where I take on vocal duties as well.
I will be touring in Mexico in September doing several gigs there: confirmed are the 20th of September in Playa del Carmen and the 27th of September in CDMX.
I recorded the mix on the laptop while I was visiting family in Italy. You can hear the ambience of the place I am staying at at the end of the mix.
It’s a track that is forthcoming on HIGHER STATES by an amazing producer named Donny Carr, that’s all I can say.
Il Gattopardo by Federico Fellini (most of his movies are amazing!)
Twin Peaks
The Himalaya region
