When we put out our first release, nearly two years ago now, we were clear that our intention was not to constantly feed the market, but that we would only make a move if we found projects that we felt truly close to. Our greatest passion is, and will always be, the hunt for records, and we want this spontaneous and natural way of discovering music to be the main and almost sole premise when putting out new releases. The idea is that behind each album there is always a story to tell. How else are we going to put all our love and care in something that we don't feel is our own?

This time the story begins in a forgotten dance music bin in a store in Pamplona's old town, Dientes Largos, where we found an old promotional copy of Alex Martín's Higlamm Fonographics 001. That inaugural release of Alex's own label had “Incognita” on it, an incredible high-revving house cut with the most soulful keyboard solo we've ever heard and which, surprisingly, was made almost 25 years ago by a person whom we admired and knew personally.

We returned to Barcelona with the record and a compulsive need to dive deep into his first creations. Besides starting to buy every copy of Alex Martín (or his countless aliases) that we came across, we decided to contact him to express our love for his music. It was then that he invited us to his house, where we could listen to - always accompanied by a bottle of coffee liquor - hours and hours of his old tracks. It didn't take long for us to realize that we were looking at a body of work as extensive and versatile as it was impeccable, under many different aliases and projects. Through them, Alex navigated a wide variety of styles, each speaking with its own codes but always keeping a very personal sound and reaching very high levels of quality for someone so far removed in space from the gravitational centers of creation of the time.

In fact, after the initial wave of amazement and euphoria from discovering an archive of recordings so huge that it blew our minds (undoubtedly the most difficult part of editing this compilation has been deciding which songs to leave out), a great feeling of shame and guilt came over us for having been previously unaware of the massive dimension of this local artist's body of work. At that very moment we began to feel the need to compile the best works of the first years of his career in order to share our amazement with the rest of the world, and to value the figure of Álex Martín as a key piece in the development of dance music during the early 90's.

It could be said that Alex's career began at the age of 8, in a music gear store on the outskirts of Barcelona where he spent hours, with his face glued to the window, observing keyboards and synthesizers. One day, the clerk invited him to come in and try some of them, which in turn led Alex Martín to ask for one of these devices every day of his short life until his mother - the true heroine of this whole story - agreed to buy him his first piece of gear at just 12 years old: a JEN SX-100 synthesizer. Alex locked himself in his room with that synth and didn't come out until a year later to ask his mother for a new piece of gear, but this time a drum machine...

Despite the financial difficulties of a single mother in charge of everything in the mid-80s, she always distinguished a desire from a whim and never hesitated to invest the little money that came into the house in promoting Alex's talent and musical education. Clearly that investment has paid off as Alex has made music his way of life. In fact, in addition to DJing and continuing to produce music, he teaches music production classes and is a tester for various brands in Spain.

That is why this compilation is dedicated to Alex's mother Carmela and his life companion Helena, as well as to all the people who - several decades before us - believed in and took a chance on their music to be released on their respective labels. From Javier Verdes to Omar León, Ata, Toni Rox, the founders of F Communications and many others, but - especially - Heiko Schäfer aka M/S/O, a key figure in the first steps of Alex's career, who left us three years ago. The music world will always be a more bereft place without people like him.

Canela En Surco would like to thank Helena Martínez, Toni Rox (Boozo Music), Omar León (Minifunk), Ata (Klang Electronik), Ángela Jaeger, Victor Sol, Manoloco, Gerard, Arnau & Ignasi (Urpa i Musell), Javi Bayo, Gerd Janson, Ivy Barkakati, Egoitz Pomares, Daniel Baughman, Paul Marele & Baldo (Subwax Bcn), Rhythm Control Crew (DJ Bruce Lee & Dafunkas), David M, Jose Spy, Juan Antelo, Purito y su Combo and the whole CNL family.