INTERVIEW: DOORMOUSE

THE STORY OF A BREAKCORE LEGEND

I’ve been having a hard time trying to summarize the career of Dan Martin, also known as Doormouse. He’s the only person I know who has owned both a record store and a CrossFit gym.

The DJ and producer rose out of the ‘90s Midwest rave scene, where he made a name for himself as an extreme presence within an extreme world. His store, labels, and parties helped to incubate a hard-to-define style of music known as breakcore, which, to the casual listener, might sound like all of rave music thrown into a nutribullet.

Speaking of juicing, Doormouse’s second act involves moving from Milwaukee to Miami, becoming a club DJ, raising a family, and getting deep into fitness and nutrition. Now it’s 2023, and Doormouse—47, sober, father of four—is somehow back in the game. He just played at a giant gabber festival in the Netherlands. He’s seen as an elder figure within a new community of kids in America. He’s proof that life is long and insane; you can change for the better, but you can also double back and pick up that distorted 909 kick drum. It’s right where you left it.

I wasn’t even a teenager when I first met Dan. He used to let me sit in his store and listen to records for hours. Sometimes, I wouldn’t even buy anything. His shop was a portal to the mysterious world of hardcore rave music. I was too young to engage with it, but the lore has stuck with me. This interview could have been three times as long; I could’ve just started giving him names of raves and barn parties and asking him to recount those nights, but I know that Dan is a busy man who values his time.

So, when I first started coming to your store, it almost felt like I was entering a movie that was three quarters done, and I was trying to figure out, retroactively, what the plot was and what had happened, if that makes sense? 

Yeah. 

And so I'm curious what it was like in ‘98, ‘99.

I would go back to like ‘93, ‘94, when there were still illegal warehouse parties happening in Milwaukee. I can remember one very specific incident. It was a warehouse on the south side. And there were people that were renting out part of it, like metal dudes and biker dudes. And the Drop Bass guys had rented out another part of it. But we went to another side of this warehouse and just kind of set up. And I remember bringing my turntables in there. And it was great. We were going through a decent sound system, loud and banging, and somebody just runs up and shouts, cops, cops, cops. So I just grabbed my turntables. I had cases that Mr. Bill had built for me that I still have to this day. 

And I just grabbed those cases and ran. And at this point there was an overpass that you could get through to the other side of a warehouse complex. And we got through that hallway, up and then down, into another warehouse that was burnt out. And then we just punched our way out of a side door and luckily got away. A bunch of other people didn't. But that was definitely the setting for what I remember were kind of my origins in that scene. Very underground, very renegade, very harsh as far as the music was. I feel like maybe vinyl played a part in that, but it was just harsh, harsher and noisier music.

By ‘98, ‘99 I had already put out my first records. I'd put out a record on Digital Hut, I'd put out a record on Deadly Systems, maybe two records on Digital Hut. At that point I was, let's see, 21, 22 years old. So I was getting flown around to play East Coast, West Coast Midwest stuff. 

It's like straight-up raves. 

Raves, some club stuff, like in New York, there would be clubs that would host stuff. Like Digital Hut was a part of this bigger conglomerate called BML, Brooklyn Music Limited. And they had all these, like, they had a techno label, they had a funky breaks label, they had a drum and bass label, they had a gabber label. 

So sometimes I would be the one gabber guy that was on the bill, you know? But ‘98, ‘99 was really peak time in Milwaukee for the kind of hard, harsh resistance techno shit that was happening, that was almost, I would say, running parallel to Drop Bass, but not necessarily doing the same stuff. I kind of moved away from it and was embracing more of a fuck-it-all punk rock ethos. So when you were coming into the store, Addict was going full bore, Distort was going full bore, we were pressing a ton of records. There were a lot of producers that were involved and it was turning into this hotbed of art, musical art. 

So, by that point where you were playing less raves, you created this almost post-rave scene, maybe—you were still piggybacking on the energy, but you were taking it in a different direction. 

And I was doing a lot of self-booking by that point. And I was still playing, like around that time, the bigger rave promoters figured that I was still a draw, and the crew that I was running with, we were still a draw. So we were still getting booked for these bigger parties as almost like, come see what's going to happen. 

What was the energy like back then? Things were getting kind of dark, right? And not purposely dark, punk or metal-style dark—it was dark in the way that there were a lot of young kids doing drugs…

I feel like the rave scene was always kind of like that. And still is to a certain extent, especially in the US, a lot of people that are doing harder drugs and getting lost in the shuffle. I remember going to New York and they were like, Yo, they're fucking dust bunnies, bro. And I was like, what are you talking about? And they're like, Oh, they're smoking sherm sticks or they're smoking PCP and they're sitting in the corner. Yeah, there was definitely some darkness to it, for sure. Not good dark. 

I guess the Midwest rave scene was always kind of dark, maybe, just from my understanding of it. But when I would read Massive Magazine when I was a kid, it just felt like there was this deep cynicism that maybe wasn't there at the beginning. 

And I will take some responsibility for that. I definitely brought a certain deep cynicism to music reviews and interviews. And I think part of it was seeing, you know, rave being promoted as this peace, love, unity, respect, but then getting on the inside and meeting a lot of the people that were behind the promotion and stuff and realizing that it was more about the economics of it than anything. I remember I put out a 12 inch that had a track title: “Every Single Rave Is The Same, I'm Just There For The Money.” And that was the ha-ha, tongue-in-cheek, we’re being hyper-ironic mentality that we were running with at that point. 

I can only assume that the money, once you entered whatever you want to call the sort of post-rave reality of breakcore or whatever, I assume that the money went down too. 

Yeah, but I was still getting booked a lot for these weird… Like, I was always the guy on the side. And again, it does come down to economics, right? People are like, Oh, he's going to bring 100 people with him or whatever. Well, who cares what they play or who cares what he plays. 

It seemed like from looking at the Addict releases, you kind of corralled a bunch of different stuff from around Milwaukee that kind of didn't sit in any one place completely. 

Yeah. And honestly, I was just looking for music that really touched me, really made me feel something. So whether it was like J. Slim or Ed Cetera or Marty Abelcain from Madison or Unabomber, or even when Josh did his punk rock thing, Poncho Nightmare. I just wanted to put out really good music and I didn't care what the genre was. 

That led you to enter this different phase where maybe you were interfacing with—I mean, were you listening to like, quote-unquote, IDM music in the mid-’90s? Was that part of your musical diet or were you just a full-on gabberhead? These questions are so insanely focused. I know. 

One of Doormouse’s children briefly enters the frame. Doormouse asks his child if he was listening to IDM in the mid-’90s. Doormouse’s child responds that he has not heard of IDM music. 

You haven't educated your child on intelligent dance music?

No, no, I have not. Was I listening? Yeah. And I was even DJing some of it. Definitely some of that was interesting to me, like the Schematic stuff and the stuff that Otto [von Schirach] was doing specifically attracted me. And for me, I always embraced any tune that I liked, whether it was techno, electro, IDM, drum and bass. I've always felt that it's all music and if you can mix it together, why wouldn't you, and still to this day, the genre-specific stuff just really, really fucking bothers me. I feel like if you go play a 60-minute set of four-four techno, you're missing something. But yes, I was listening to IDM and a lot of chilled-out music at that point too, even when I was making really chaotic, psychotic shit. 

Yeah, I mean, I think I first started coming to the store because I was trying to buy rap records. 

Which I had a ton of. Yeah. 

But you never fully exited the rave scene.

Yeah, just because the bookings kept coming. As I kind of kept putting more records out, more people caught wind of the name, I guess. I was going to Omaha and Dubuque and Iowa City and stuff like that. And those were always warehouse raves. And again, a lot of times it would be house DJ A, techno DJ B, you know, drum and bass DJ C, and then Doormouse.

What were these parties like? They must have, after a point, become pretty bleak. 

For me, I was always there to play music and I was always very serious about playing music like I still am to this day—I prep my sets and I really pay attention to what I'm doing and I care about it. And I never got involved in hard drugs. I was a drinker, always a drinker. And that wasn't necessarily a great thing, but I never went down the rabbit hole of powders and pills and stuff like that. And I feel fortunate that the two times I tried cocaine, I got a sinus infection both times. Best thing that could happen to me. 

When I think about that era, I think about—your sub-scene was a drunk energy and it was pushing up against an ecstasy energy. And that was the friction of that moment. 

100 percent, yeah, absolutely. It was, you used cynicism, and there was definitely a cynicism saying, Yeah, okay, you're trying to sell this saccharine package of peace, love, unity, respect, but that's not really what's going on. We all know that's not what's really going on. And the music that you're trying to push to accompany that is just as saccharine as the drugs that are coming down the pipeline. 

And then you moved to Miami, opened up some CrossFit gyms. Sometimes I’ll mention you to friends and they're kind of incredulous, but it sort of makes sense. I'm like, you know, intense performer, hardcore rave DJ moves to Miami, opens up CrossFit gyms. 

Yeah, yeah—it wasn’t instant, though. I remember when you came down to visit Miami and we were riding around in a car that had Doormouse decals. 

Yes. 

So when I first moved down there, I sold the record shop and I planned to just go full-time with music. I moved into a condo—my girlfriend and now my wife who's still here with me, mother of all four of my kids, she found a great place. It had a studio room that had a water view and it was amazing. That's when I was starting to go to Europe more. And then I realized that I didn't love the travel. I was playing at this one nightclub on Sundays and the manager was like, Hey, can you play more pop-based stuff? Like, can you play the hip hop hits of the day? And I was like, well, everything's digital now, I'll figure it out. 

So I said, yeah. And I started playing more and more Fridays, Saturdays. And then I played a reggae, dancehall night for three and a half years on Mondays. I knew nothing about that music when I started but I learned pretty quick. And thanks to the power of the internet, I was able to do it. But at a certain point, it was becoming really toxic for me. My drinking was really, really picking up. And I had kind of dipped my toes back into exercising and training. When I was in high school, I was an athlete and I was supposed to go to college and play sports and all that stuff, but I decided to chase the music dream right out of high school. 

I got to a point where I was like, I just can't do this anymore. What am I going to do with my life? I don't want to keep traveling. I would come home from long trips and my daughter would be like, who the F are you? She was two years old. And I started getting back into fitness and was like, Oh, my mental health is improving. I feel better, you know? And I still kept DJing in the clubs until I really saved up enough. I'm like, Okay, I have a few personal training clients. I'm making a little bit of money from it. It's time to make that jump. And I remember telling the people at the clubs I was working at that this is it. I'm done. And all of them were like, congratulations. None of them were like, Oh, fuck you, man. They were like, somebody got out. It was like I was leaving prison or something. 

It's interesting you said “chase the music dream,” because when I think about the community you were a part of, it was so underground and nihilistic. But I suppose you always had a different kind of focus—like, you opened this record store, you know? I think a lot of kids, they wouldn't have been like, Oh, this guy is really purposefully chasing his music dream. They’re watching you perform at this rave and you’re naked and freaking out. But I saw this different side of you. I would come into the store and I'd be like, This guy has his shit together. He runs a really nice record shop. It was interesting that you could balance these two extreme sides of yourself.

Yeah, but the balance between the store and the performance—none of the performances I've ever done have been about a gimmick or anything like that. It's just what flows up from the inside when the switch goes on. But I can't live like that 24/7. I don't think anybody really can. 

No, I mean, obviously I’ve gotten similar questions at times because I've worked day jobs over the past many years. Now I fully understand it, but I think as a very young person, I wasn't able to process that yet. 

So you knew of the Doormouse performance person, but yet you'd come into the store and I'd be like, Hey, and your dad would let you stay in the store by yourself for an hour or something. Go walk around Walgreens or whatever. 

My whole experience with that era was funny and mysterious, because I had access to the records and the magazines, but I wasn't able to go to the actual parties. The only time I ever saw a rave—it was pre YouTube, so the only time I ever saw a rave was on, like, Dateline NBC exposes. And then by the time I was old enough to go to them, I wasn't as interested, because the scene had sort of died. 

I never really thought about it after I left Milwaukee, but I've talked to a few people since. And they’re like, yeah, the whole thing just died right after you left. You know, I guess the counterculture to the counterculture, if you will, and it became something else, whatever that is, I don't know. 

I think there was a shift in my generation. And I guess you kind of went along with this in your own way by DJing pop music. But there was definitely a shift where, at 16 or 17, I just got really into the idea of making pop music.

Yeah, for me, it was honestly like, I almost wanted to keep that hidden. I didn't talk about it or advertise it or anything. And to me, it was like, this is a job. 

For sure. 

I'm going to play five hour sets of music that I don't necessarily love. And at a certain point, somebody was like, What do you play? And I was like, “Well, I think of the record that I hate the most. And then I think of the record that I hate the second most. And I mix those two together and the crowd goes, yeah!”

That's one real generational split. I feel like I'm of the generation of millennials that reacted to that Gen X cynicism with like, essentially what I suppose people call poptimism now, which is a poisoned term that means nothing. But in 2005 or 2006, it felt exciting.

Yeah. You're like, Oh, you guys are so old and crusty and just cynical with the world. Take this. 

But now it's funny that it's gone full circle. There's this new scene of kids that are booking you and you're in your mid-40s and you're doing it all over again. You must have never thought, I don't know, maybe you did. But this must be like at least a bit of a surprise to you. 

I had no plans or ideas of ever making a comeback. Like, all my shit was packed away in boxes. I was like, that's behind me. To me, that was a whole different life. And I had moved on and that was it. It was actually my wife that kind of was like, Hey, you were good at that, you should really give it a shot. Because people kept reaching out over the years. So, I would go do a show here or do a show there every once in a while. 

But it wasn't something where I was like, I'm going to really make a go at this. And yeah, PRSPCT, a label from Rotterdam reached out because they were doing all this streaming during the pandemic. And I didn't even know what OBS or streaming software was at that point. I had an Ableton setup that I would bring out to play with Josh once every other year or whatever. But yeah, it's been surprising and it's been really nice actually to go back and do it through a completely different lens where I remember everything. I'm not worried about losing my glasses and everything going wrong and missing flights and what happened last night. 

Yeah, it's gotta be surreal because now you're sort of this senior figure and you're probably surrounded by—it's probably different in Europe—but maybe when you play a show in New York, I assume it's a pretty young crowd. 

Oh yeah, yeah. It's different in Europe because the DJ crew that I run with there is older. There are some younger folks that I do play with quite regularly, but a lot of the guys have been doing it for just as long as I have, but they never stopped. But it's looked at differently there. Here people are like, Oh, you're a DJ. Ha, ha, ha. Over there, it's a little bit more like, cool, you've been producing and DJing for 30 years—respect on that. 

For sure.

The crowd here is definitely younger. But I like the energy, man—the New York scene’s energy has a lot of good stuff going on. It's got the grit. It's got the punk energy. Yeah, it's good stuff. 

And it seems like a lot of the dividing lines between genre and culture that used to exist, it just doesn't matter to younger kids. 

Yeah, totally like that. Most of the shows I play are breakcore, gabber based, but there's a wide variety of styles represented and it's very much anything goes, which is what I've always appreciated the most. You know, Europe has a little more of a, not all of it, but it has a little more of a—this is the style that you're playing. You go play some of these festivals, and it's a gabber festival, but there's like six different styles of gabber represented on each stage. 

Yeah, we don't have enough techno enthusiasts in America to do that. 

Not at all. 

So what's next, I mean you’ve got to be insanely busy, but is the goal to get Doormouse at Tomorrowland? Because it seems like this PRSPCT shit does, as far as I can tell, rub up against the kind of bigger business of European electronic music.

It does, and they have very good connections and networks and they're respected. When I started doing the streaming stuff, I kind of sat back and I was like, Maybe I want to put another record out. I definitely set some targets, like, this is the label I want to release on, this the other label I want to release on—here's how I'm going to get there. These are the shows that I want to play. And I've kind of checked all of that stuff off at this point. And I've got a bunch of collaborations that are about to come out with various people on the scene, young and old. But I'm not planning on playing shows for a while, to build towards bigger stuff. 

So no more sleeping on the couch of a 21-year-old. 

I'll be playing shows in Europe. 

Yeah, where you get at least get—you're probably at least getting a nice little hotel room. No hostels. 

They take care of me very well. And if I'm sleeping in anybody's place, it's a respectable house. 

For sure. 

When they first started booking me over there through the agency at PRSPCT, they were like, There's a lot of people that we haven't dealt with who are reaching out. And they have a different set of standards than we're used to. And I'm like, That's why you guys are between me and them. Because I might say yes to some of this stuff. And they're like, You're not allowed to. 

Like what, just like some weird, like, anarchist squatters? 

Yes. Totally. And that, you know, that scene still exists over there. 

What's funny about Europe is even that squat rave scene, they're probably more accommodating than a normal promoter in America. Because of those government resources.

Well, it's either it's government resources or in the US, you have these guys, and I'm sure you've dealt with this before, where you have the art buy, right? 

Yeah. 

You're a piece of art for the evening and you get paid before you even start. And that's like maybe 10 percent of the shows that you're gonna play. But every other one is like, Oh yeah, can I Venmo you down the line? We didn't do as well as we thought we were going to. 

It's always hard because that kind of precarious energy—I talk about this a lot—but that's the energy that produces the really good shit often, you know? 

And I'm at the point now where I'm not like… I don't know how to say this without sounding like an asshole. I'm not relying on it for my income. 

For sure. 

I'm like, Okay, whatever, hit me up when you can hit me up. You know, I'll see you down the road. 

No, that's a good position to be in. Essentially, you're a patron of the scene. 

Totally. And I'm like, yeah, okay, great. I'm gonna make a few dollars. I'm gonna come home. It's gonna be great. And I had a great time playing both on the East Coast and the West Coast. And I played in Chicago. I had some really fun shows, but I'm not actively looking to do a ton more right now.

Yeah, that makes sense. You gotta hold out for Tomorrowland.

Exactly. I played Dominator, which is a 50,000 person gabber festival. And that set the target pretty high. Okay, great. We got there. Good stuff. Not many Americans that do this stuff get opportunities to do that. So, great. Now what's next? 

You, on stage with David Guetta. 

Boom. 

Doormouse’s most recent track, a collaboration with the Belgian artist Djipe, is out now. Doormouse on Twitter and Instagram and Soundcloud