If there are two things French duo Dirtyphonics (aka Charles Barranger and Julien “Pitchln” Corrales) and renowned vocalist Micah Martin know well, it’s that every journey comes with both costs and rewards, and that music has the power to guide us through the peaks and troughs along the way. This is the story of “Coming Home,” the group’s latest metal-fueled drum and bass track.
The emotionally riveting single evokes joy and pain as the trio leads the listeners through the process of finding solace after a long journey, whether it be months of touring or breaking through a personal struggle.
The piece not only offers a window into the artists’ souls, it also puts Dirtypohnics and Micah Martin’s genre-bending skills masterfully on display.
Dirtyphonics and Micah Martin alike share deep roots in the world of metal as Barranger and Corrales tout collaborations with Sullivan King, Linkin Park, and Marilyn Manson, and Martin’s vocalist career spans back to his Battle Of The Bands days.
Martin proudly displays his trophy on camera as the artists dive into the story of their collaboration and talk about their projects with EDM Maniac:
EDM Maniac: Hi guys, thanks for joining us! Micah, it looks warm and sunny where you are; where are you calling in from today?
Martin: Hi! So I’m in Malibu right now. I just moved out here last month and I live with Pixel Terror and a group of others in the Collective house of rock and roll and EDM.
EDM Maniac: What are you guys doing there?
Martin: It’s a bunch of different artists that make EDM, rock and roll punk music and we all live, work, and collab together, it’s pretty fun!
We’re also shooting a reality show while we’re out here too; it’s Called Hyper Punk. We’re pitching it and working on the pilot episode right now. We got a couple of letters of intent from different production companies that, if we got big investors, they would pick it up and pitch it for reality shows like on MTV or something like that. But we’re probably gonna do a bunch of YouTube stuff first.
EDM Maniac: Wow very cool! So, what brought you all together to do this collab in the first place?
Barranger: Basically, we’ve been thinking about working with Mica forever. Then somehow Mica hit us up on socials saying, hey guys, we should do something together, and it happened to be at the right time that we were working on “Coming Home” The very first versions of the song that Mica sent us back gave us an edge of grit–a feeling that was missing in the song that we were looking for without knowing we were looking for it. So it was a, you know, perfect match.
EDM Maniac: With its melodic style of Drum and Bass and Metal vocals, this is a pretty emotionally charged song, what inspired you to take that direction?
Martin: Yeah when I first heard this song as Charles and Pitchin were working on it, it definitely pulled some emotion out of me. I was in a pretty bad place mentally when I was writing it and I felt like this song really helped me pull myself out of it. The song is called, I’m ”Coming Home”, so I felt like I was coming home mentally in terms of being in a good place and like, getting through these tough times that I was going through and this song actually helped me get through that.
EDM Maniac: Dirtyphonics, metal, and hard rock music have always been a big part of your lives, what first inspired you to fuse your passion for that style of music with electronic music in your careers?
Barranger: Well we both were playing in metal bands when we were teenagers, and at that time, the electronic music scene was just popping off in France and we were just inspired by the technological possibilities–when you’ve been touring with a rock band and hauling around drum kits and stuff, the idea of being able to make music by yourself with just a laptop is amazing. So that and just the love for music and the sounds made us want to play with it– and the funny thing is that, as soon as we started getting serious with electronic music, we created a band again, and we have this duo because that’s the way we like to create and share music.
EDM Maniac: Speaking of “Coming Home,” where would you say you guys feel the most at home?
Martin: Honestly? I feel like I’m home right now. Like I just moved out here, I’m surrounded by people I love and my whole mental state has changed since. I feel at home when I’m working on music when I’m surrounded by my friends and when I’m here at my nice crib in Malibu.
Barranger: Yeah, Mica, it’s so important what you’re saying because there’s a lot of people talking online about self-development shit and how you should live your life and whatever. And I feel like the most important of any advice you could give is to feel at home with yourself and get to know yourself and love it, embrace whatever you are, whatever your past was, wherever you’re trying to go more than trying to please anyone else around you.
Corrales: Yeah, especially as artists, every single time you release something, criticism is coming, so you better be in line with yourself to just be able to understand and take the criticism or protect yourself and just not give a shit.
But also speaking of coming home, this is a story I can’t personally relate to but I’ll probably remember for the rest of my life– some fans came up to us at a show and they explained that they were soldiers who were drafted to fucking Iraq or Afghanistan, and every single day they drove around in their Humvee doing convoys, they listened to our music to keep from going crazy basically. And when they made it back to the US and made it back home they were like, holy shit– the music made us go through something insane. So when I listen to the song, I think about things like that too sometimes–times when you go through something insane and you finally come home, and you’re like, holy shit. I fucking pulled it off. I fucking did it. That’s so important.
EDM Maniac: That’s an amazing story. So you guys started the Dirtyphonics project in 2008, what do you think has helped your music stand the test of time?
Barranger: Probably the fact that we’ve never really tried to hit any trend. Obviously, we’re influenced by the music that’s being written by everyone else at the moment. But we’ve never put ourselves in one little frame and we’ve never conformed to what the times said we were supposed to do.
EDM Maniac: And turning to the future, what upcoming projects do you have in store for 2024?
Corrales: We’ve been working on a lot of music over the past year and a half, and Coming Home stems from one of these projects that we started. So, uh you can expect a lot of music to come out in ‘24 including our new album. Then on top of normal touring, the club season, and the festival season, we’re trying to design special shows for specific cities where we have a lot of fans who’ve been following us for more than 10 years. That’s something we’ve never done before so we’re pretty excited about that.
EDM Maniac: That all sounds very exciting! Thank you guys so much for sharing your story; we can’t wait to see what’s next for you!
Listen to “Coming Home” here:
Images courtesy of Dirtyphonics, Micah Martin, and Rukes Photography
