Interview with Wendy Martinez

Hello! How are you?

Hello! I’m fine, thank you. Always working hard on my music, it never stops.

You used to perform as Bye-Bye Dubaï. What changed?

Bye-Bye Dubaï was the first project built around my compositions, written and performed in English. It took many forms: piano/synths/voice solo, a cello/synths duo, progressive rock, etc. And I played with many different artists… I guess I needed to centre myself. So I created this new band under my own name, “Wendy Martinez”, which gave me more freedom. I’ve performed with almost the same band since the beginning, all good friends of mine.

How did the production of “Ahora” and “Flowers” go? Was it solely your effort?

I composed the songs alone, but they were finished by other people who really contributed to the sound. For “Flowers”, which was a really important song for me at the time, I was helped by Elie Granger, who recorded and arranged it with multiple sound designs and ambiences that perfectly illustrated my words… He responded really well to Agharta’s brief, and I think he made it a perfect song for a video game! His work is part of the reason people loved this song so much; he made it so dreamy… Jonathan Girerd, the drummer of Bye-Bye Dubaï, played the drums, and I recorded the piano part I wrote.

For “Ahora”, I recorded the song with another bandmate I had at the time, Stéphane Souchon from the band Inlakesh, who played guitar. I had just come back from a trip to Mexico and I really wanted that kind of ambience. And it was still Elie Granger who recorded, arranged and mixed the track.

On both tracks you can hear a fake trumpet I made with my mouth.

Do you remember anything about the production of the game? How did Agharta approach you?

It was a long time ago, but I think it was a friend of a friend of the drummer, Jonathan Girerd, who introduced us! The meeting and explanation of the project happened in Lyon, where I lived back then.

“Flowers” and “Ahora” feature English and Spanish lyrics. Is singing in multiple languages something you usually do?

Thank you very much. Yes, I adore and need to speak other languages… It’s also another way of singing and writing that interests me.

But as you could probably tell, I had quite a bad accent in those languages. And I made a couple of mistakes in the lyrics. I’ve since progressed in English with my other band, Gloria, where I sing with an English friend who helps me!

Now I’ve returned to my native language, French, because I needed to be understood and to go back to my roots, to the musicality and poetry that French permits. But I still adore singing songs in other languages.

Is there a story behind the two songs?

Wendy Martinez kindly shared the official lyrics to both songs with us. Out of respect for her work we haven’t reproduced them here; the words on our Lyrics page are our own transcription, made by ear. You can hear both on the band’s 1112 Episode 03 SoundCloud playlist.

On Flowers:

This song talks about a really bad time I had… the loss of a being… I was hurting so much that I needed to transform this pain, so, as always in my life, I used my words and my singing to heal, and it helped me a lot.

On Ahora:

I think I wrote this song especially for the video game. Agharta asked me to speak about amnesia. As I worked with elderly people at the time, it was also a way for me to talk about Alzheimer’s…

Where can people see more of your work?

They can find me on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Spotify! I’m also singing in the girl group Gloria, which is about to release a third album.

I hope you’ll like my new work. And thank you for these questions!