St.J. started playing guitar at a very young age (around 7 years of age). He diversified on instruments playing piano, drums, and clarinet. Guitar having always been the favourite instrument, he decided to make that his main instrument. Self taught and frustrated with his playing he ended up with Jimmy Gillmer and spent around two years studying jazz and a further 6 years of classical training with Jimmy during the late 80’s/ early 90’s.
This was also the period during which he was seen on stage with Top40/ Cover bands like Panama, China White, Rapscallion and an 11 year stint with Shaft. After spending so much time playing the club circuit and covers he decided to take a chance at the original music market and around 2001/2 got involved with Simplicity, which after a split up became Glaze (a hard rock original band). During the same period he met Chris “Manik” Moon and Clifford “DarkLord” Swindells and with them completed the lineup of Atmosphere Control Unit (ACU), an electronic based trio in the Cyber Punk genre.
Just when things started to look good for both bands Glaze broke up and Clifford was tragically lost due to cancer. Devastated, St.J then took a sabbatical of a couple of months after which he got involved in some projects which never really quite got off the ground.
One dream of his always was to do an instrumental project, solely his own. During the latter 2000’s St.J. and his son Rici Martins (a talented drummer and pianist) started a recording studio (Alternate Minds Recording Studios) with the idea of recording their own music and to provide a service to others.
During March 2008 St.J.started a non-music working career in Saudi Arabia with ample time to write music. This, together with the studio provided the means to finally during 2008/ 2009 record St.J’s first solo album. The album is a mixture of Rock/ Blues and Jazz/ Rock fusion with St.J. performing all the rhythm, lead and bass guitar parts and Rici, whom amongst others have played for Enism, The Awakening, Subrosa and Christian Heath, the synthesizers and drums.
The album entitled “Beginnings” was released on 18 April 2009. The second album is already in the planning stage, writing will commence in earnest during the latter half of 2009.
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