- Kevin Richard Martin collaborates with his past self, the saxophone player.
- Kevin Martin (AKA The Bug) stopped playing the saxophone in 2003, but that hasn't stopped him from releasing a pair of pure sax albums 18 years later. Don't expect any wannabe jazz improv—Martin knows his strengths. Red Light is more like hearing a beginner practicing scales down the corridor as a gale-force wind blows through the building. Like almost everything Martin puts his hand to, it's also an immersive, physical sound experience, even without the bassbins shaking.
Red Light was created using sounds Martin recorded while he was part of the bands God and Ice, along with some synthesized sax and a typically generous dose of effects on top. In God, he would blow through a Marshall speaker stack while screaming, making up for his musical and vocal limitations with a wall of sound delivery. On Red Light, that wall is broken down into its individual bricks which are left to orbit in a space where traditional methods of playing have little standing—and where the healing and hallucinatory properties of sound rule.
Take the opener, "I Cut Off My Wings," whose elements are so intricately modulated that a simple triplet of looped notes and their echoes hold your gaze for five minutes. Or "End Times," which has captivating, time-stretched blasts no human would have the lungs to pull off. Martin dissects the source material at an atomic level, drawing drones and white noise to the surface, then letting it all drift in a heavy fog, propelled by the physical movement of air through brass.
Occasionally, Red Light showcases the instrument's more vulnerable tremors. On the breathtaking 11-minute closer, "Oblivion Seeker," for example, passages of near silence give way to poignant sax washes, like the quiet crescendos on a Bohren & Der Club Of Gore record. It's these naked moments that are most affecting, revealing a rare intimacy in Martin's work and adding emotional depth to his usual savvy behind the mixing board.