Mark “Maxwell Sparta” Lopez is a producer who was born in the rural area of Jamaica known as Clarendon.
His love for music started in the church when he first saw his grandmother Mrs Lopez sitting at
the Windpipe organ. The sounds reverberating around the building of a Sunday gave him such thrilling chills that he knew he wanted to recreate that sound somehow one day. This would manifest later in his career as the gothic musical landscapes that he would create and become known for.
His first foray into music came when he got a copy of the production software – DAW “FL Studio” – more popularly known as Fruity Loops.
Graduating from the Bustamante high school in 2012 he had also graduated musically to the more professional Pro tools when his Mum’s relative, Leonard Bartley AKA the world renowned ‘warring don from Clarendon” Merciless, recognised his talents. Instead of going all the way to Jamaica’s capital, Kingston to record – Merciless built a soundproofed home studio where the young engineer now known as ‘Mad Max’ would hone his craft engineering Dubplate sessions for Merciless and his contemporaries – the likes of Action Fire, Nitty Kutchie, Little Hero & many more.
Max then moved to Kingston where he would become an underground beat maker in the studios of producers like Anju Blacks, Damage Music and UIM to name a few.
His next move would be to develop his own sound. This would come from a childhood meeting he had at a funeral in Montego Bay. Still at school, he was now introduced to his father’s side of the family – a family who would number one Leroy Russell Junior – Russell would later become known by his stage names Tommy Lee and Tommy Lee Sparta as he graduated from the shadows of Vybz Kartel’s Gaza Empire. It was with Tommy Lee that Mad Max would morph into Maxwell Sparta and with it the development of the signature gothic soundscape would grow.
He would go on to appear in many of Lee’s music videos and work closely behind
the scenes on many of the Sparta crew’s projects.
Now is the next phase of the growth of the Maxwell Sparta legend – his own label……
Brown Boss Musiq………
To Be Continued……
