Country Music Inspires Zack Martino

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NEXUS LOUNGE MIAMI 2022

Zack Martino joined us for a Take-5 interview in the Sennheiser pop-up studio at the Nexus Lounge Miami. He spoke about his experience traveling cross-country, saying it’s something everyone should experience at least once in their life and shared with us how he finds tech-house inspiration in the strangest of places.

The now established DJ, who hails from Staten Island, has been immersed in music throughout his entire life; his childhood was marked by rock music and his teen years by dance production. He released his first single in 2015, signed with the label Armada Music in late 2016, and worked on several successful remixes in 2017, which effectively catapulted him into the mainstream industry. Since then, he has been considered for a Grammy nomination, topped the Billboard charts, and toured around the continental US.

In early 2022, Zack performed as an opener for industry peer Cheat Codes on “The Hellraisers Tour.” And now, he’s releasing a string of singles, all with his “traditional Zack sound,” for what he hopes will come to be his second EP. You can follow along with his current roll-out on streaming platforms such as Spotify (where he boasts nearly half a million monthly listeners) and check out his first EP, which was released shortly before Covid.

In the past, when asked what inspires him the most, he answered typical of highly creative people—literally anything. But in our interview, to the same question, he gave a different answer than you might expect, saying:

"Listening to other genres of music, you can get inspired—like, I could hear a country song now, and I could get an idea for something that I want to do that's even like tech-house... back in the day, I would be like ‘Nah, I'm not listening to that, that doesn't inspire me, why would I listen to that?’ But I think just opening your eyes to all these other genres of music.. [you can] do some stuff outside the box of what you're doing."

Speaking of other people’s music, he also stated that he often hears a popular song and thinks about how he would’ve done the song differently. We can only imagine that’s a natural occurrence for anyone with musical tendencies, especially those who find themselves inspired as such.

And in what is yet another benefit of opening your eyes and seeing outside the box, he recounts feeling inspired after his cross-country road trip, in which he drove “from [his] driveway… straight to LA”. He says that being on the road and seeing places you might not otherwise be a must-do for anyone and everyone.

In the rest of our interview, we covered topics such as his schedule at Miami Music Week 2022, his dream pair of Sennheiser headphones (which would be pink and sparkled), and the vocal-driven house artist he’s loving right now. Tune in for more details!