Welcome back to the Underground.
As we continue breaking down the core elements of the collective that brought Architects and Wanderers to life, we have to look at the digital architecture. Up next is the mastermind behind our electronic pulse: Martin Black, handling synthesizers, drum machines, and electronic programming.
When you are tackling ancient philosophy, it is incredibly easy to fall into the trap of sounding archaic—using acoustic instruments to mimic the past. Martin does the exact opposite. He takes the oldest concepts in human history and forces them through complex, modern circuitry. Whether he is building towering, rigid structures with analog synths or programming frantic, glitching drum machines, Martin ensures that the Underground always sounds like the future analyzing the past.
From the Atmosphere to the Amplifier
Before he was building soundscapes, Martin was analyzing real ones. He spent years working as a meteorologist in the UK, tracking atmospheric pressure systems and storm fronts across the North Sea. He treats synthesizers exactly the same way he treats the weather—as massive, invisible systems of pressure and release. When he is dialing in a synth patch, he isn’t just looking for a note; he is trying to create a specific climate for the song to live inside.
The Soviet Surgeon
When Martin isn’t programming beats for the band, his workbench looks like a Cold War electronics graveyard. He is obsessively dedicated to hunting down and repairing vintage, obscure Soviet-era synthesizers. Because the schematics are rarely available in English, he essentially reverse-engineers the circuitry from scratch, wielding his soldering iron like a scalpel to bring completely dead, heavily distorted analog machines back to life to feature on our records.
Geometry in the Sky
It sounds almost poetic for a guy obsessed with atmospheric pressure, but Martin’s primary escape from the studio is competitive kite-flying. He custom-builds massive, structurally complex geometric kites from carbon fiber and ripstop nylon, entering them into professional tournaments. For him, it’s all about mathematics, tension, and wind resistance—a quiet, analog contrast to the heavy digital programming he does for the band.
Martin’s Essential Electronic Tracks
Martin’s fingerprints are all over the digital framework of our discography. Here are a few essential tracks where his synthesizers and drum machines completely dictate the philosophy:
- “Mathematics in the Air” & “The Garden” (First Principles): On our Pre-Socratic debut, Martin’s cold, calculated drum machines provided the rigid, mathematical framework that the chaotic guitars constantly fought against.
- “Cut it in Half (We Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere)” (From Cosmos to Cave): Tasked with capturing Zeno’s paradoxes of motion, Martin programmed a stuttering, looping, anxiety-inducing drum machine beat that perfectly simulates the feeling of running but never advancing.
- “Aristotle’s Machine” & “Unmoved Mover” (Architects and Wanderers): The ultimate display of Martin’s control. He uses towering synthesizers to construct the massive, rigid blueprints of Aristotelian logic, and then follows it up by programming the cold, unyielding mechanics of the ultimate cosmic engine.
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