Martin CK, a Trondheim-based producer, uses an engineering background to help craft his infectious tech house beats. Inspired by festivals like Tomorrowland, he aims to bridge the gap between the local Norwegian music scene and the global sounds of tech house, hoping to entice new listeners to explore the genre. Read more about this rising artist, found on White Label, and check out his releases here!

How did you get your artist name and what is the significance?

My nickname since childhood has been CK and all my friends have called me that for ages. When I decided to get into DJing and producing, I thought of simply using CK as my artist name. CK isn’t exactly unique or original and there were many artists on music platforms called that already. So just to make it more personal I added my first name to it.

Where do you call home? 

I live in Trondheim, Norway. Trondheim is in the middle region of Norway. Our winters are long and our summers aren’t exactly very hot. It’s Norway’s 4th most populated city, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not exactly a large city. We’re just under 200,000 inhabitants here. The thing I love about living here is that the city is just large enough to have everything you need; beautiful mountains and forests surrounding the city, a city centre with all the shops and necessities, a thriving student-town due to the university here. We also have a variety of festivals during the summer, where “mainstream” famous artists such as Martin Garrix, Sam Feldt, and more have performed.

How do you describe your musical style? 

The short answer is that I make tech house targeted towards the club dance floor after midnight. The longer answer is that the music scene in Norway is sadly a few years behind the rest of Europe, so tracks like “Losing It” by FISHER are the hardest type of tech house tracks being played by many of the local clubs. I want that to change, so the music I make is tech house with sound design tailored to appeal to people who aren’t that familiar with the genre, in hopes of making them want to explore the world of tech house which is thriving in the rest of the world.

What first inspired you to get into music?  

Like many other DJs and producers, attending large festivals made me want to get more into what being an artist means. I attended Tomorrowland in 2016, 2017, and 2018, which was definitely my gateway into DJing. I was at the time a university student in engineering, so I didn’t exactly have a lot of spare time to produce music. I decided to learn how to DJ a bit, but wait until after I finished my engineering degree before I began learning how to produce, since I knew that was a time-demanding thing.

So I DJ’d from time to time during my time at university, and when I finished my degree in 2022, I purchased Ableton and began to learn everything from the bottom. Since then I have continued to DJ at underground parties and a few clubs, and have hosted a couple of music events, as well as released seven tracks.

Is there an artist or person who has inspired you most? 

I think Chris Lake has been the largest inspiration for me. His sound design and production style are legendary, and my goal is to someday produce at the level he does.

What’s your favorite piece of music production gear or software? 

The best VST is the one you know how to use properly, which to me is Serum. Pretty much all synths and basslines I make are by using Serum.
Also, the fabfilter plugins are neat, where Pro-MB, Saturn 2, and Pro-R 2 are used in every project I make. 

What’s your favorite part of the music production process? 

By day I’m an electronics engineer, specializing in sonar technology and underwater acoustics research. In other words, I’m quite nerdy and use my brain to find technological solutions to challenging problems very often through my job. When I make music I often use that same part of my brain and try to combine an analytical engineering approach with a purely musical approach to find out how the track should be formed. I go down “sound design wormholes” and research the effects certain sound design techniques have on the frequency content of the resulting sounds and how our brain perceives them. I think those wormholes are what I like the most, since I learn a lot about sound design and most of the time end up with a sound I’m very happy with.

Any future projects coming we should know about?

I have several tracks which are close to completion that I am aiming to release after summer. We’ll see if this will become an EP or separate singles.

Check out Martin CK’s music on BPM Supreme’s White Label and read more interviews here.

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