Bronx-born/Ohio-raised Cliff Martinez moved to California in 1976 during the middle of the L.A. punk movement. After stints as the drummer for L.A.'s Finest - the Weirdos, Lydia Lunch and Foetus frontman Jim Thirlwell, and the final incarnation of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band ("Ice Cream For Crow"), Martinez joined the Red Hot Chili Peppers playing on the band’s first two albums (the Andy Gill-produced debut and the George Clinton-produced Freaky Styley) and later the Dickies. It was during his tenure with the Chili Peppers that Cliff began exploring the new technologies of that era, which would eventually guide him towards film music.
A tape Martinez had put together using these new technologies made its rounds, leading him to score an episode of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. The same recording also ended up in Steven Soderbergh’s hands and Martinez was hired to score the famed director’s first theatrical release 1989’s "sex, lies, and videotape." Martinez’s longstanding relationship with Soderbergh has continued through the years and they have worked together on ten theatrical releases including Kafka, The Limey, Traffic, Solaris and 2011’s Contagion. Perhaps it is because of his time in the punk scene that Martinez’s approach to scoring is nontraditional. His scores tend towards being stark and sparse, utilizing a modern tonal palette to paint the backdrop for films that are often dark, psychological stories like Pump Up the Volume (1990), Wonderland (2003), Wicker Park (2004) and Drive (2011).
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