The first Dominick Martin album, Shine A Light – landed in 2009 and was the result of him working through being attacked and hospitalised and recovering from alcohol addiction. If you’re new to his work and aren’t quite ready for the more club-charged pace of his drum & bass, then they’re a great place to get acquainted – and both are pretty poignant documents. Under his real name Dominick Martin, he’s written two remarkable traditional song-based albums that touch on folk, jazz and blues. It’s even diverted into other musical realms. Over the years he’s incorporated his own writing and distinctive vocal range into his productions to such a degree, it’s become part of his signature. A reserved and introspective musician, he was one of the first artists in the genre to write lyrics and sing on his own productions. A Belfast-born, Monchengladbach-based artist who is a complete anomaly to those examples above and indeed drum & bass itself. Then there’s Dominick Martin, or Calibre as he’s better known.

Other famous examples include Pendulum, an act whose rock influences thrusted drum & bass into the UK Top 10, and DJ Fresh, an artist responsible for some of the late 90s/early 00s’ most uncompromising club tracks before proceeding to writing some of the genre’s most successful pop songs, including drum & bass’s first-ever number one.

A seminal body of work tailored with delicate songs and lyrical elements, it set benchmarks that still exist to this day. Goldie’s drum & bass blueprint album Timeless is one of the most famous examples of how songwriting can be incorporated into the genre.

Hip-hop, dub, reggae, dancehall, soul, disco, rare groove… nothing escaped the original melting pot that drum & bass was founded on. Double-time drum breaks were the canvas and outside influences were the colours. There’s enough space for everything – that was the whole idea. Dominick Martin AKA Calibre: “By pursuing that simplicity you enter that state when you feel you’re watching yourself working” How a ‘superstar DJ’ from the world of drum & bass is now embracing the art and craft of songwritingįor an electronic genre that rattles away at the brisk pace of 172BPM, that came from politically-charged UK rave culture and was built on breaking rules and pushing technology to make sounds it was never invented to make, drum & bass has more space to accommodate true songcraft than you might expect.

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