Relaxer Finds Nourishment in Chaos (and Non-Chaos Too)
An interview with the DC-born, NY-based artist and Dripping festival co-founder about the return of Black Eyes, his ever-shifting sound and why he sees independence as a top priority.
Some artists can be summed up in a sentence, even after decades of activity. It’s not necessarily a bad thing; some of history’s greatest and most influential musicians basically did one thing extremely well, and kept doing it again and again throughout their career.
Daniel Martin-McCormick, however, is not one of those artists.
Born in DC and now firmly installed in New York, he’s been involved in a litany of different projects and endeavors over the years, both solo and collaborative. In the process, he’s become one of those figures whose creative oeuvre has dozens of different entry points, many of which reside on completely opposite ends of the musical spectrum.
Punk and hardcore types might know him from Black Eyes, a fire-breathing band that was a key part of the legendary Dischord label’s last great burst of activity during the early 2000s. Armed with two drummers, two bassists and two vocalists—Martin-McCormick was the yelpy, more unhinged one—the band became something of a sensation on the art-punk circuit following the release of their self-titled 2003 debut, and in true hardcore fashion, they managed to break up before their even wilder sophomore album, Cough, was issued the following year. Following a long hiatus, Black Eyes unexpectedly reunited a few years back, and the group now has a new full-length, Hostile Design, slated to drop next month. To celebrate its arrival, they’ve also put together an upcoming four-day festival in Washington DC called Speaking in Tongues.
As it happens, festivals are something that Martin-McCormick knows quite a lot about. A former co-director of the much-loved Sustain-Release, he’s spent the past three years running the Dripping festival alongside his close friend Leo Miller (a.k.a. Baby Leo). Taking place in a wooded area of New Jersey, the limited-capacity campout event has drawn rave reviews, rapidly becoming a sensation among those with a taste for adventurous electronic and experimental music.
That, of course, makes sense, or at least it should for anyone who’s followed Martin-McCormick’s musical output over the past two decades. Following the initial breakup of Black Eyes, he relocated to San Francisco and logged several years in avant-garde noise-punk outfit Mi Ami. After that, he set out on his own, first making unconventional strains of electronic not-quite-pop as Sex Worker, and then venturing into more dancefloor-oriented sounds as Ital. That project helped to kick off the lo-fi “outsider house” aesthetic of the early 2010s, but it quickly morphed into something more slippery and complex, ultimately finding a home on the Planet Mu label.
In 2016, Martin-McCormick started over again, adopting the name Relaxer and delving deeper into the techno realm. Considering all the identities he’s cast off over the years (and yes, there are others I haven’t mentioned), it’s kind of amazing that he’s still using the moniker today, even as he’s taken creative left turns into ambient, sound design, freaky bass mutations and hybridized versions of drum & bass. Trying things is something that Martin-McCormick is definitely not afraid to do, and that includes embarking on new collaborations. Earlier this year, he debuted Cry, a project with fellow NYC rabble-rouser Kilbourne, and while the duo has only played a handful of shows so far, their thundering and (literally) scream-filled sounds appear to already be turning all sorts of dancefloor conventions upside down.
Have you got all that? Probably not. Keeping track of Martin-McCormick is a daunting task—and I haven’t even mentioned his teaching work, or his occasional forays into music journalism—but even by his own maxed-out standards, he’s been having an exceptionally busy year. Curious to find out what’s driving this latest purple patch, and how he’s managing all of these different projects, I asked if he’d be up for doing an interview, and over the course of a long call last weekend, he gave me the full rundown.
There was a lot of ground to cover, but we touched all the major bases—Black Eyes, Cry, Dripping and, of course, his solo work. Along the way, we also talked about his relationships with New York and Washington DC, the current state of DJ culture, his penchant for chaotic sounds, the importance of staying independent and what it means to be punk in 2025. (And speaking of punk, Dischord diehards will be delighted to know that he told me a great little Ian MacKaye story.) Free time isn’t something Martin-McCormick has a lot of these days—as he explained, he doesn’t even get to see his friends all that much—but by setting aside a couple of hours to talk to First Floor, he’s opened a fascinating window into what he’s all about.