Maro Music has a gift for knowing how to produce music that gets people up and dancing. His latest singles is called, “Insane,” and it’s out on his label, Addicted To Music. “Insane” is a tight package, a rare commercial tune with bona fide dancefloor appeal. Able to cross over from radio airplay to peak-time at a music festival, “Insane” distills the essence of youthful insouciance into a wickedly playful aural romp.
“Boy you make me feel insane / let’s smoke / Hilton / and Champagne.”
“Boy you make me go crazy / let’s do some shots / and get hazy!”
Maro Music, (real name, Marek Walaszek) is a prolific Polish DJ, producer and sound engineer. For more than 15 years, he’s DJ’d at major nightlife venues throughout Europe and Asia. As a music producer and sound engineer, Maro Music has worked with some of the biggest names in hip-hop, reggae and electronic music, including Agallah, Dominique Young Unique, Wu-Tang Clan, Sizzla, Redman, Bang La Decks, DJ Kazzanova and others. Sought after by the biggest international brands – Coca-Cola, Absolute Vodka and BMW among them – to create music for their advertising campaigns, Maro Music’s proven his skill in the recording studio and his studio and label, Addicted To Music, regularly produces music for Warner Brothers. He’s in demand on the lecture circuit and he’s served as a judge for the Audio Engineering Society’s modern music and sound engineering contest at the annual AES conventions in New York City, Berlin, Hungary and Warsaw. He’s released music under the alias, MXF, alongside DJ Frodo and his mixes have landed him consistently in the “top 5” charts on Mixcloud.
In 2011, Walaszek founded Bettermaker, a critically acclaimed manufacturer of professional-grade mixing and mastering hardware and software built for professional musicians and audio engineers. Bettermaker is used by studio professionals including the GRAMMY-winning and GRAMMY-nominated mix engineers, Dave Pensado, Jimmy Douglass, Luca Pretolesi and Greg Wells.
Listen to Maro Music’s “Insane” here
EDMTUNES: Some of our readers might know you from your recent single, “Shake Di Bom,” which is a trap tune based around twerking. What’s the theme behind your latest single, “Insane”?
MARO MUSIC: I always want to give some meaning to what I do. Even if it’s a trivial thing, it has to tell you some story. “Insane” is about having fun, about male/female interactions. It’s about that feeling you get when you meet someone for the first time and already have projections of the future events you can share together. Shooting the music video for “Insane” was, well, insanely fun! [laughs]
EDMTUNES: You’re known as a top-flight producer and mixing/mastering expert in Poland, probably the best. What’s it like working with big acts like Wu Tang Clan?
MARO MUSIC: Working with someone from the top of the food chain is always a challenge and a pleasure at the same time. You cannot predict their workflow or attitude. Only thing you can expect is that if you are out there already, you have to work very hard and 95% of people that I have met from the top are really working. Having talent is also a plus. The great thing is that you know your work has a purpose. When you work with amateur artists, you work just as hard but your work doesn’t reach as many people.
EDMTUNES: We’ve heard your live broadcast – which was a live, two-hour DJ set – on DASH RADIO’s “ElectroCity” channel in the U.S. recently. Actually, that digital radio station is broadcast around the world. Your mixes are bananas! How do you prepare for a DJ set?
MARO MUSIC: Thanks a lot. Since I listen to a lot of genres, I always like to go for a lot in a DJ set. When I prepare, I start off thinking of a target audience that I’m playing for. I will not play the same set on the radio as I would do at a festival. I knew I would be playing for mostly U.S. listeners, so I wanted to show a little bit of stuff from Europe, too. Then I just run though my playlists and mark the tracks I like in the moment. The difficulty for me is to pick what not to play rather than what I want in my set. For me, songs are not just tracks; there are also people behind them.
“For me, songs are not just tracks; there are also people behind them.”
EDMTUNES: We’ve also found some of your DJ sets on Mixcloud and other blogs in the U.S. You seem to put a ton of effort into your programming. Why is it important to you to do so many quick cuts between tracks?
MARO MUSIC: [laughs] This expresses my personality. I get bored fast with a song, so maybe this is an urge to change something. Lately I’ve learned that not everyone is so impatient. Maybe next time you’ll hear 20 tracks in an hour, not 40.
EDMTUNES: You created the very successful hardware company, Bettermaker. Tell us about that? How does your expertise with Bettermaker inform your decisions as an artist and producer?
MARO MUSIC: The company was based on my own needs. My studio is based in Poland and I do a lot of mixing and producing for clients from around the world. I loved the sound of analog gear but also liked the convenience of saving presets in my plugins. So I designed tools for the studio that have a 100% analog signal path and can be recalled, just like a plugin. This gave me more time to be creative. Bettermaker is a also a great gateway to the best engineers in the world whom I look up to. Bettermaker gear is actually used by several GRAMMY-winning and Platinum-selling mix engineers and producers, especially in the U.S. As they learn about my product, I can learn from them.
EDMTUNES: What’s next for MARO MUSIC?
MARO MUSIC: I’m finishing an album tentatively called, Pierogi Style. I get so many inspirations. I’m always changing everything. One day I’m happy with it, the next day I want to throw it away or sell it to other artists. As of February this year, I counted that over 45 songs that I was involved in as a producer and twice as much as a mixer since the year began! And that’s just two months into the year.
Official: http://maromusic.com