Cover story: Martin Jensen

Propelled at the front of the international EDM scene thanks to tracks like «Miracles», «All I Wanna Do» or the irresistible «Solo Dance», Martin Jensen is now one of the most influential DJs et producers out there, and his 2018 ranking in DJ Magazine’s Top 100 testifies for it. But beyond his heady bangers, what do you know exactly about the 27-year old Danish artist? Our team at On The Move met him and discovered a person as funny and down-to-earth in daily life as he is determined and passionate on stage. Martin Jensen expresses himself this two-faceted personality, between the «ordinary guy» and the «crazy performer».

Martin Jensen: I started to think about it when I was playing at a nightclub as a resident DJ. I was always annoyed that I had to be the guy left to warm-up and to never be the main act. Then, I started producing my own stuff – thinking it must be different when you do it your own way - and it worked from the first day so here I am!

Martin Jensen: Yeah, when I heard «Solo Dance» for the first time when we were doing it, I was like «Yeah sure, I think it can do something» because it is so unique! It showed off, it did! I was very happy and super excited for it to go that well. It was streamed more than 500 million times!

Martin Jensen: I think I’ve evolved mostly personally. There are a lot of things happening with a career: you don’t sleep, you have to cope with a lot of stress, with jetlag, with record labels, management, all that kind of stuff… Before I was just a resident DJ doing it all by myself. But now, there is a full team around me. They want to make decisions around me as well. I’m pretty set minded so when I want something, I’m selling my mind off to do it. But suddenly, I have people with me and they have to make choices for me and I don’t like that. That’s these kind of things I learned the most to cope with actually.

Martin Jensen: It’s a track I’ve been working on for one and a half year now. And it has just been laying there and I had vocals featured on it many many times but nothing had really been working. And finally, we reached out to James Arthur asking if he wanted to collaborate on it and he said « Yes! ». So, he worked on the vocals, I finalized the production and we finally released it!

Martin Jensen: On my pop radio singles, the strongest part is always the lyrics and the vocals. When I’m doing my club thing, it’s more the production. It is club music you know. When you’re playing festivals or clubs, it’s not the easiest thing just to play «Solo Dance», «All I Wanna Do» or «Nobody». Of course, those are the tracks that people know and sing along to but that’s just the party started songs. I want to bring more. That’s also why I also want to do a crazy tour calendar with club shows and festivals. I don’t want to stand and do a show where people are like «Oh, ok» and after 10 minutes, they’ve watched it all. I want to bring them something. The same kind of things that DJ Snake does. When you go to a DJ Snake’s show, or The Chainsmokers’ show, they play their popular tracks to put the vibe off but then it’s mostly trap or dubstep or else. That’s the same kind of things in my set. It is about finding a balance in the sets where I am playing my radio songs but I also want to do something that is actually working in clubs or festivals.

Martin Jensen: Yes, I want to bring something different in my sets. Right now, I have some old school R&B, I got some sing-along tracks, soul, dance, then got some big room stuff, and I got some trap. It is all mixed-up. Every song is like collaborating with each other. So I’m at least playing 3 to 4 songs in the same kind of genre before switching. I don’t want people to stand and think: «What the hell went wrong there?» Up and down, up and down... No, it’s one big flow. Like a river flowing from my whole set.

It's really important to me because I spend a crazy amount of time to see what is working and what is not working, over and over again. What is working in Asia, in Europe, in the US… So, all the time developing and developing the sets. And I think right now, it is pretty dope yeah!

Martin Jensen: Yes, there are some, definitely. When you are playing a club show in Denmark, you’re playing 45 minutes because people are okay with it, that’s it. When you’re playing in France, you’re playing 90 minutes and plus because they just want to go on and on. The same in Asia, it’s like 90 minutes. In the US, you can do 2 hours, 3 hours. That’s a very big difference to see how long the public is going to spend with you.

Martin Jensen: I am more getting ideas when I’m on tour. But then I’m just like letting things down for a bit and then I go back to the studio and finish them up. You’re getting inspired when you’re on tour but you’re also really stressed and travelling a lot. Unfortunately for me, I cannot be at that level where we’re on private jets (laugh) so it’s still commercial. We spend a lot of time in airports and stuff. But hopefully, one day, we’ll be there (laugh)

Martin Jensen: Yes, I have tried to make it like picking different sounds from different areas of the world, where we’ve been touring the most. And it went pretty well I think. The next EP is going to be a bit different. I cannot tell much about it yet but I think it is going to be really really dope!

Martin Jensen: I am going to do a lot of short EPs in the future because I want to have more club music out definitely. But I am still going to push up the regular radio pop singles as well. I think the next one will come in June already. I just want to push music out as much as possible.

Martin Jensen: Every time we’re doing like a new season of live shows, I’m sitting down with the team and we decide everything about the shows: which show I want, how I’m going to prepare it, how they are going to be produced, and how they are going to look. I actually have the same company doing visuals than the one doing visuals for Tomorrowland: the Prismax company. They are like the best of the bests. And I chose them because when I do a show, I want to deliver it to the maximum. I don’t want to go out and say «It’s half there». I want to do it full. So that’s why I chose Prismax because they also do the top of the tops – Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike for example - and if you want to meet the top of the top, you need to produce it the top of the top. The standards are really high now, every single stage now has huge LED walls. So coming up with like your background and your logo spinning around, there is nothing interesting about it anymore. But if you come up with something people have never experienced before, visually speaking, then you got the attention.

Martin Jensen: It’s just fun because I’ve been thinking about this a lot for the last couple of years, like who is Martin Jensen exactly? And I just think I’ve figured it out lately. I would go so far to say I’m kind of the ordinary guy. I’m in in black clothes, all chilled down, down to earth, but when I’m doing shows, everything is exploding : fireworks, pyro, crazy sets, visuals, everything. It’s like these two kind of sides. When I’m doing my regular pop music, everybody can sing along to it, and then with the « World » EP and everything, everybody freaks out and going shit to say politely. That is what I want to present for myself, the ordinary guy on the one side, and the crazy performer on the other side.

Martin Jensen: Lately, I started vlogging so that I can show more of what we are doing on tour. Before my vlogs were very pretty, there weren’t a lot of mistakes, really beautiful pictures. But now, I start doing my old stuff, I want it to be more personal. My old team wanted everything to look pretty and stuff like that but I got tired of it and now, I want to let people see how my life actually is. It is really important for me to be close to my fans. When I produced my first tracks, I always involved my fans, even on « Wait » I got them to sing the chorus. I’m only here because I have my fans

Martin Jensen: The DJ mag position means a lot in China. Like a crazy lot! It’s not that important in Europe. But definitely in China, it is, if you wanna have gigs... I had colleagues that went directly into the top 40 and they did 80 gigs in China that year. The year after, they fall down the list and they did 12. So, it’s really really important if you wanna do gigs in China but other than that, again, I’m playing shows every single week so I don’t need it, need it... It’s just nice to be represented by the most prestigious ranking in the world, I think.

Martin Jensen: A lot of touring coming up, and then hopefully a couple of singles coming up too and then there would be a new EP before summer.

Martin Jensen: I really love « Boasty » from Wiley, Sean Paul & Stefflon Don feat Idris Elba. That’s dope! I also really like Martin Garrix’s « High On Life ».

INTERVIEW BY CORALINE BLAISE PHOTOS BY DAVID FITT