Who are you?:
Darin Marshall from the Planet called “Earth”

Where are you from, and how did you get to where you are today?:
Born in Hollywood but grew up mostly in Southern California and moved to the Bay Area when I was 21 and learned music software including MIDI and worked for Opcode Systems, Inc. on Studio Vision

Who or what are you biggest influences?:
Kraftwerk, Joy Division and New Order, Depeche Mode, Visage, Ultravox, Nitzer Ebb, Nine Inch Nails, Autechre, Joey Beltram, Minimal Design and Peanut Butter with Chocolate (like nuts and gum, together at last!)

How did you first get interested in electronic dance music?:
Led Zeppelin’s toons with synthesizers in them (what the?), Steve Miller’s Fly Like An Eagle extended version with delays and synths was awesome to me ears. Like nothing I’d ever heard before, Jon and Vangelis (Jon from the band Yes that I was forced to listened to as a child) and Saturday Night Fever and that whole era with Yarborough and Peoples, and butterfly collars and flared pants, etc.

I got into DJing on a lark as I wasn’t really into being the center of attention at all. I much prefer the anonymity of being the producer of a track and watching people when a DJ plays the music to see how they react without them knowing that I’m the one who made the music they’re dancing to. I DJ’ed quite often at a weekly techno club called Static with Sutekh and a host of other resident DJs. I was and still am a very reluctant DJ. I prefer to play the opening slots because I can play the weirder stuff like bits and pieces from German label Klang, or Chain Reaction and Ersatz Audio weirdness. I started the Belief Systems label and released a record with Graeme LaPaix and then decided that the trance genre was going in a in a different direction that we were – so, Sutekh, Erin and I released the Swivel techno EP and everything kind of took off for us from there.

What music projects are you working on right now?:
Music to appease our Jovian overlords. You think I’m joking but on several fronts, I’m very serious.

There are three albums available from Magnatune.com (http://mp3.belief-systems.com), a Creative Commons music sales and licensing website with additional tracks and remastered versions of all of the songs released previously, as well as several tunes on the new album Epigrams that have never been released digitally or on CD. Monument is a song I completed recently that is dedicated to a friend of ours who passed away last year and my good friend Jonnie Gillham is doing a remix of this that is just stellar. I can’t wait for this to get out there.

I’ve also been trying to guide some of my friends who actually like my music (amazing I know) with their production efforts. It’s incredibly useful to have someone to bounce your ideas off of; Someone that will listen and take the time to give you feedback on your music. It’s rare to find people willing to do this these days. I try to do that for my friends whenever they ask for my silly opinion.

What is your music process like?:
I throw some beats into the mix until I’ve got a nice 8 or 16-bar salad bowl of slop and then stretch that out into a longer piece of musical sausage and lather, rinse, repeat. Seriously, I use Reason a lot for most of my production and I’m really a big fan of using the pattern sequencers like the Redrum and the Matrix sequencer to keep everything in containers. I prefer this method to pasting hundreds or even thousands of notes into the sequencer that I have to manage if I want to make a change. I’m probably going to try and get more into Logic in the future though as I really like the variety and the sounds of the built in virtual instruments as well as the option to use external plug-ins. There are some really amazing ones out there these days.

What technology has shaped your music the most?:
Propellerheads Reason, the sampler and the synthesizer. This is a very involved subject that would take several pages and tons of diagrams to explain. The sampler has opened up the universe of sounds available to the producer like no otehr device but soft synths and virtual instrument-based synths have come a long way as well. Reason has been the single most useful tool for me in terms of completing songs. I have a lot of friends who have tons of gear and virtual gear and sampled instruments but for some reason, they just don’t finish songs. I had that problem for a long time before Reason came out. Reason changed everything for me personally. I’d like to get Logic integrated into my production flow for the mixer because I still think Logic’s internal mixer creates more space around the instruments but I have no empirical data to support this claim. I just think it sounds better to my ears than Reason’s internal summing mixer does. It could be something I’m doing that’s causing this but others have noticed this as well. Samplers and synths are awesome tools but what sums it all up can have a a dramatic impact as well.

Do you have any other creative outlets besides music? Hobbies, interests, etc.:
For fun, I enjoy shaving enormous Chinese grapefruits and playing Alien Glyphs Canabalt, Words With Friends and Morocco on my iPhone when I’m bored. I’m a photographic dilettante and need to get more serious about the craft by buying an SLR someday and investing in some nice glass so that I can advance to the next level. All of the artwork for my albums was photographed by me at various locations in and around my house in East Oakland, close to Alameda Island.

What can we expect from you in the future?:
Everything and nothing all at the same time. Seriously, some kind of beat-oriented music and possible some beatless music at some point as well. Monument is coming out next month with remixes by my good friend and stellar producer John Gillham, techno stalwart John Selway and label boss Gustavo Lanzas’ DJ friend Patrick Anthony from Portland throwing his production talents into the mix as well. It’s very possible that you’ll see some additional re-releases of some previously released material of mine on Nude Photo Music in the not so distant future. Stay tuned!

Name some artists and/or labels that you like:
808 State, Audiomatique Recordings, Cari Lekebusch, Lee Jones, Blueprint, Intacto, Plasmapool, Stealth, Missive Music, Future Sound of London, Platipus, Reload, Missle Records, Rotation, Air, Autolux, Kraftwerk, Joy Division, New Order, Depeche Mode, Cetu Javu, Flying Lotus, Gui Boratto, Grouper, Grizzly Bear, Alison Gang Gang Dance, Ellen Alien, Burial, Ruckspin/Planas/DLR, Milton Jackson, Radioslave, Dubfire, Wehbba, Beach House, Datasette, SiBegg, Klang, Drumcode, Cornelius, Cut Copy, Christian Morgenstern, Cliff Martinez, Goldfrapp, Lemon Jelly, Visage, Ultravox, Nitzer Ebb, Nine Inch Nails, Autechre, Boxcutter, Aphex Twin, Joel Mull, Kilowatts, Ladytron, Ladyhawke, Guy-J, Anil Chawla, DP-6, DJ Slip, Adam Beyer, Mike Ink, Joey Beltram, Luke Slater, Demdike Stare, Röyksopp, Robert Babicz, Sasha, Ratatat, RAC, Radiohead, Quiet Village, Portishead, Pete Tong, Reflection, Mount Kimbie, ISAN, Monolake, Miss Kittin, Minilogue, Peace Division, Mike Sheridan, MGMT, Mazzy Star, M83, Lukid, AEther, Love & Rockets (Beautiful! and Haunted When the Minutes Drag), Lone, Sonic Youth, Steve Lawler, The Horrors, The Orb, The Field, The Cure, Trentemøller, Tosca, Tortoise, Trans-Am, Touché, Jamez, Ulrich Schnauss, UNKLE, Tycho, The Strangler, Washed Out, Yagya, Yazoo, Zero 7

Portrait photos by Benjy Feen
Other potos by Darin Marshall