Exclusive track premiere of ‘It’s OK’ by IKE, taken from the upcoming album ‘The Great Escape’, out April 8th, 2022 via Four Flies Records.

This is the new album from Italian-born, Berlin-based guitarist, composer and producer Isaac de Martin, aka IKE. ‘The Great Escape’ is his second work under the moniker of IKE and it is a superb kaleidoscopic concept album that combines jazz perspective with electronic music soundscapes. Today, we premiere ‘It’s OK’, the first single taken from the release, features the voice of American singer-songwriter and actress Sera Kalo.

‘The Great Escape’ features amazing musicians: Yasmin Hadisubrata on keys, Simona Turk on tenor saxophone, Matt Giella (NY) on trumpet, Jack Baker (UK) and Niklas Ahlsved (Helsinki) on drums, Riccardo Carli and Giovanni Frison on bass, Giacomo Li Volsi on synth and Michele Uliana on clarinet.

‘The Great Escape’ will be released on a beautifully packaged vinyl featuring stunning artwork created by Italian graphic designer Franz Longhi. The album will also be available on all streaming platforms and digital formats worldwide.

You can preorder ‘The Great Escape’ in vinyl format at the following link.

“An invitation to abandon the resistance between who we really are and who we became as a person”

Your new album is being released soon. Was there a lot of effort invested in creation of it and is there a particular concept manifested between the notes?

Isaac de Martin: Well, when it comes to a new album the efforts are usually endless. Moreover, while I did ‘The Great Escape’ was the beginning of the pandemic. I wanted an album that sounds like a band in the studio playing live but everything happened into separate tracks. On the other hand, pandemic literally stopped the music industry for a while so I had plenty of good time to shape the sounds and colors I wanted in the record. For me a concept is pivotal. As I have in mind a sound I want to create, a color I mean then it needs a story to tell. Albums are not that far from books, there are stories inside, sometimes revealed, sometimes unknown. In this case the concept manifests itself pretty obvious in the title and the lyrics of the songs. The whole album is an invitation to abandon the resistance between who we really are and who we became as a person through a lifetime. Let it go, becomes an inner journey to meet that inner child that purely knows who we really are.

To what degree do you think your academy background influences your music?

Still too much. I studied classical guitar and jazz music for too many years and I still have sometimes that approach to music where it has to be perfect, clean, well made, skilled and so on… I do see that knowledge opens up potential but also limited creativity which is more instinct. Right now, I am trying to forget as much as possible about harmony and theory and just trying to have a spontaneous approach to the music and the instrument I play. While I am working on new music I experiment with different tunings of the guitar just to not know what I am playing and rely only on my ear and emotions.

You’re also an avid lover of Russian cinema. What in particular do you like the most when it comes to Russian directors?

Russian cinema is something really unique, it is not even the directors which make them so special to me but really the photography, the rhythm in the movies, the way the stories are unfolding. There is a depth in those movies (especially from the 70s-80s), a kind of depth and attention to details of emotions. Is part of Russian culture which I love, and it resonates with my creativity. I had the chance to work at the Mos Studios in Moscow on some symphonic music and I realized that the feeling I had about Russian Cinema is true and real. Western movies are great and perfect, Russian movies are deep and more human (which is not perfect but real). Many of the songs I compose get inspired by some Russian movies: it can be a screenshot, a short sequence… that’s enough! Have a look at Kuryer (1986) by Karen Shakhnazarov, you will see what I mean. I believe that diversity is so important and the more we globalize the more we have to protect this human basket of diversities. Monoculture is pretty much a dangerous thing and we can see in art how it can destroy creativity. Creativity that may solve present and future challenges of our being, because art, science, economy, sociology et cetera are all so much connected to one another.

So, IKE consists of a bit of everything you’re interested in ?

Musically yes, but mainly is my favorite music room where I experiment, improvise, have a band and play live concerts. I also do other sonic researches and productions but they go under other names otherwise IKE’s identity would become a hodgepodge of everything and nothing.

‘The Great Escape’ is a very diverse combination of jazz and electronic music… How did you originally approach it and can you share some further words about the technical aspect of the album?

I imposed myself some limits on making this album, first of all I worked on creating a kind of atmosphere, where the songs were more jazz, soul or electronic. I technically used a limited amount of sounds. Then the fun part of the whole thing was the mixing which I did with Nene Baratto at Big Snuff Studio in Weissensee (here in Berlin). Opening the tracks into a fully analog equipped studio was the real mix and blend of the diversity into one single identity. Some songs even didn’t end up in the album because they were too far from the core idea. I composed the music on my laptop at my home studio and I was sending the demos to the musicians located a bit everywhere (NY, London, Italy, Finland and of course Berlin). They were making the good takes and sending them back to me. When I had the whole album mixed in the box by myself I booked a few days at Big Snuff Studio and started the final mix.

How did you first get to know Sera Kalo?

I knew Sera by name from her band in Berlin. I never met her before until I asked a friend to get me in touch with her to perform at my previous album’s release concert. She wasn’t available but then I was already making the song ‘Somewhere’ so I invited her to write a melody and lyrics to it. Then it was the time for the other three songs. We had a really good creative connection even though we were not meeting at all. Then we finally started to work on the live version of the album and it was and still is so much fun. I do see we are going to settle a genuine band!

Due to the pandemic instruments were recorded separately, but that doesn’t seem to have any impact on the album itself. Have you found the isolation creatively challenging or freeing?

Isolation was one of the main limits imposed on the creative process. Freedom is strictly related to its opposite and like everything is dual. If I don’t have external limits I need to create some in order to unleash my creativity. This time it happened that the limits were many and it turned out to be so exciting.

Would you mind telling us who all are part of the album?

Let’s start geographically far and move closer: Matt Giella, trumpet (New York), Niklas Ahlsved, drums on Somewhere (Helsinki), Jack Baker, drums on all the other songs (London), Matteo Fortunato, trombones (Rome), Giacomo Li Volsi Harp and Moog (Treviso), Michele Uliana, clarinet (Treviso), Riccardo Carli, electric bass (Treviso), Giovanni Frison, electric bass on ‘In My Feelings (Trento), Simona Turk, tenor sax (Berlin), Yasmin Hadisubrata, Rhodes (Berlin), Sera Kalo vocals (Berlin) and I, guitar and synths.

We are less than a month away from the release. ‘The Great Escape’ will be released on April, 8 2022 in a beautifully packaged vinyl featuring stunning artwork created by Italian graphic designer Franz Longhi. Last word is yours.

The people behind Four Flies Records felt the connection with me through the music in the album (the demo at the time), I discovered we are quite much aligned and this is so precious! As they proposed to Franz Longhi to draw the cover it happened that he immediately showed us a strong visual interpretation of the music. I think the visual and the sound go along very well. I am working with some videographers to implement Longhi’s graphics into live projections. So excited to perform on stage again and touring with this album. See you (in real) soon.

Klemen Breznikar

Headline photo: Dovile Sermokas

IKE Official Website / Facebook / Instagram / Bandcamp
Four Flies Records Official Website / Facebook / Instagram / Bandcamp / SoundCloud / YouTube