Debit (Delia Beatriz) is a Mexican-American electronic-music composer, producer, DJ, and adjunct professor at NYU whose work fuses performance, archival research, and music technologies spanning ancient acoustics, hardware electronics, computer synthesis, and machine learning. She moves through archaeological, algorithmic, and communal archives, with a primary focus on live concert formats and a deep interest in landmark compositions, site-specific sound installations, and evolving modes of performance. The result is a contemporary Gesamtkunstwerk: an immersive event where music, spatial design, and critical commentary converge in a single, visceral experience.
By tracing music-technology lineages across epochs and scenes, Beatriz reveals the social contexts, power structures, econ-political conditions and AI-driven databases that shape musical aesthetics today. This approach informs The Long Count (Modern Love, 2022). Drawing from her research into Mayan wind instruments and utilizing AI to digitally recontextualize this ancient archive, she created an electro-acoustic masterpiece that transcends time. The record was lauded by The Guardian, BBC Radio 3, and Pitchfork.
Earlier releases trace the same research-to-performance arc, translating regional sonic lineages into experimental electronic formats: Animus (N.A.A.F.I., 2018) recast pneumatic club idioms, developed through fieldwork on various Latin American electronic dance traditions, while System (2020) reverse-engineered tribal guarachero using industrial-techno heuristics.
These works have expanded into large-format installations, concerts, and DJ sets. She has performed in hundreds of shows and festivals worldwide, including Roskilde, Berlin Atonal, SXSW, Norberg Festival, Red Bull Music Festival, Tono, the Whitney Biennial, and the Venice Biennale. She has also been featured in conferences and panels such as the Audio Engineering Society, UNAM’s Aleph, MUTEK Montréal, MUTEK Mexico, and Rewire Festival, among others.
At NYU, she teaches Global Electronic Music, Electronic Music Performance, and Computer-Music Synthesis, guiding artists to combine historical insight, technological experimentation, and critical inquiry as they shape new futures for sound.
Long Bio
Born and raised in Monterrey, Mexico before her family relocated to Texas when she was a teenager, Delia Beatriz aka Debit has long straddled two distinct worlds. As a DJ, her selections burn the unmistakable swing of Latin club music into ironclad techno frameworks, and as a producer and composer, she drifts seamlessly from avant-garde and drone modes into experimental dance music without hesitation.
Since her graduation from Brown University in 2010, Beatriz lived in and was involved with electronic music communities in various places in South America. It was her permanent move to New York City in 2013, where Martinez traded the synth rig for a USB, DJing regularly in the local dance scene and establishing the Debit moniker. Her debut album “Animus” was released in 2018 by Mexico City collective N.A.A.F.I., and wove pneumatic club sounds with melancholy ambience, receiving acclaim from FACT, Resident Advisor and Noisey. She swiftly followed it up with “Love Discipline”, a beatless opera of futuristic, cinematic and sinister soundworks.
While she was studying a graduate degree in Music Technology at NYU, Beatriz assembled her most defining statement to date, “System”. This EP solidified the duality of her unique approach, reconstructing tribal guarachero music using sounds snatched from industrial techno. “System”, which featured collaborations with Teklife’s DJ Earl and tribal innovator Javier Estrada, was universally acclaimed, and placed prominently on year end lists at FACT, Pitchfork and Resident Advisor.
In 2022, Beatriz released her next album “The Long Count”, an ambitious electro-acoustic tome that delves into the past to peer into the future. Using research she made into Mayan wind instruments and how AI could aid in a creative recontextualizing of the instrumental archive, Martinez developed digital instruments and harnessed machine learning to compose music that feels completely out of time. The album was on legendary British imprint Modern Love in February and it was placed in best album of the month at Resident Advisor, Mix Mag, Dj Mag, while being named the Global Album of the Month by the Guardian. The album received critical acclaim and features in BBC 3, Pitchfork, Dazed, ID, amongst many others and was ranked 3rd best global album of the year at the Guardian.
