Last Saturday, Dec. 14, San Francisco DJ Justin Martin was performing at Shelter. It's a club in Shanghai. Before that it was Bangkok, Bali and Hong Kong. And Australia.
On Thursday, Dec. 19, he is in Whistler for his second visit in a year, mixing it up at the Garibaldi Lift Company. Next month he is going to South Africa for the first time, via NYC.
"I recover very quickly from jetlag," Martin explains.
"I love Whistler. It was so much fun. I was able to hit the slopes the next day and it had been snowing the whole day before. I absolutely love playing in Canada. All my friends that I've made at festivals over the last few years, at BASS Coast, Shambhala, they're just awesome people."
Martin has spent much of 2013 feeling grateful for all this musical bounty. It came off the release of his debut album Ghettos & Gardens in 2012.
"It has been my best-ever year. I finally started to see the payoffs from doing this project and it was really exciting to have all these new opportunities," he says.
"This is the year I just said to myself that I was going to take advantage of every single opportunity that came my way. Almost to a suicidal degree I said 'yes' to everything. Weekends I was playing in Ibiza, (Spain), in London, in Vancouver and in L.A. ... all within four days.
"But I was like 'I need to do it all!' It was so rewarding. It really has been the most exciting year of my life. It's very addicting, too. The more that I see the payoff for working hard, the more it makes me want to work hard and keep pushing myself to make more music."
Martin spent November laying down new music in England, getting in the studio between shows, and has been testing it out whenever the opportunity arrives.
"I'm always trying to test out new music... my main purpose for going over there was to make new music. We finished four new tracks and I've got a bunch of other stuff lined up for the next year, ready to come out. I'm excited. They seem to be going down on the dance floor really well. Hopefully, people in Whistler will feel it as well," he says.
Now 34, Martin started DJing as a hobby when he was 16, when he got his first turntables.
"It's been more than half my life, which is crazy," he says.
Now he has been travelling and working full-time as a DJ for seven years since that fateful moment "when I was able to quit all of the jobs and go for it."
Asked how his work and DJing is trending these days, Martin says all change in his form is "subtle."
"I try to keep my sound very underground. House music, fun, funky, bassy and there are always going to be trends and I try to steer clear of those. Two years, three years ago, dub step was the big sound. Now the dub step guys are going into more throwback 90s house revival. I've always had an open mind when it comes to music. A good song is a good song, no matter what genre it's in," Martin says.
"(I) just try to keep it fresh and mix it up in my DJ sets. Whatever I am feeling at the time, whether tech house, minimal, or breaks or drum 'n' bass. Anything. I want to make sure people are smiling and dancing."
