Martin Garrix Artistfacts

May 14, 1996
He was born Martijn Gerard Garritsen in Amstelveen, a suburb of Amsterdam in North Holland. Music was always in the Garritsen household. Garrix' father Gerard played guitar, and his mother Karin played classical piano, giving their son a musical environment long before he discovered electronic music. When young Martin's ambitions turned to DJing, his father backed him practically - buying him the equipment he needed to perform at school parties and spending freely on DJ Tiesto recordings his son wanted.
It was the 2004 Athens Olympics that set Martin Garrix on his path. Watching fellow Dutchman Tiesto perform a landmark set at the opening ceremony, the 8-year-old Garrix was transfixed. "I just remember the sound, it triggered something in me, like what the f--- is this?" he told The Independent. "The synths, the chorus, the whole vibe. To feel that progression." It was the moment Garrix decided he wanted to make electronic music.
Before he was spinning festival crowds into a frenzy, Garrix spent eight or nine years studying Spanish guitar - specifically flamenco. But after that he knew he wanted to make electronic music. The discipline of classical training gave Garrix a musical foundation that would later inform his approach to melody and chord progressions.
After teaching himself production on FL Studio at home, he sent his early tracks to his idol, Tiesto. Tiesto was impressed enough to recommend the teenage producer to Dutch EDM label Spinnin' Records.
Garrix was just 17 years old when "Animals" became a worldwide hit in 2013, turning him into a global superstar almost overnight. When "Animals" broke into the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States, it became the first instrumental track to do so since Kenny G's "Auld Lang Syne (The Millennium Mix)" in 1999. In the UK, the track went even further, topping the Singles Chart outright - the first instrumental to do so since Mr. Oizo's "Flat Beat," also in 1999. For a teenager from Amstelveen making music on his laptop, it was a remarkable double milestone on both sides of the Atlantic.
Frustrated by disputes with Spinnin' Records over ownership of his masters and social media accounts, Garrix launched legal proceedings against the label in 2016 and eventually won back the rights to his music. He used that hard-won freedom to launch his own imprint, Stmpd Rcrds (pronounced "Stamped Records"), in 2016. The label became a home for his own releases as well as a platform for artists he believed in.
Ask Garrix what he does for fun and the lines get blurry fast. "I do see my job as a hobby," he told Studocu, "because I started this as a hobby and there is not much changed. The only thing that has changed is that I get a lot of money for my music."
Despite his superstar profile, Garrix has little interest in elaborate grooming. "I have a very simple hair," he said. "I comb it back a couple of times, and it sets the way it is."
Away from the decks, he is a food lover - particularly fond of pizza - and has worked as the face of Armani Exchange campaigns, suggesting a sideline in fashion that sits some distance from his low-maintenance hairdo.

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