London-based composer and performer Rotem Haguel aka JL Segel chats to Magazine Sixty about his life in music, thoughts and sounds. Having just self-released the excellent Fog EP.
Welcome to Magazine Sixty, Rotem. You have been recording under the alias JL Segel. Where does the name originate from?
Thanks for having me, Greg 🙂 JL Segel is a play on the title of a book I read as a child, called Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I found it in my parents library and was quite captivated by the imagery. My grandma’s maiden name was also ‘Segel’, so it felt natural to change the spelling. I wanted the alias to feel like a ‘pen name’ that I could hide behind and feel comfortable with.
How did you first get introduced to synthesisers? Was there a particular band or artist who most inspired you?
As a session player, I was asked to play the bass synthesiser on tour one time, and that led me to purchase my first ever keyboard synth. The connection with the instrument was immediate, and I especially enjoyed moulding and mutating sounds. Growing up, I didn’t listen to music with synthesisers in mind. I used to listen to lots of music, and that included electronic music and pop music that made use of synthesisers. I became more aware of synths as an instrument in university, through friends who were playing them. Later on,
You have been self-releasing your music. Can you tell us about the freedom that you gain as an artist in doing so? But are there also pitfalls to that process?
I think that self-releasing gives you ownership over the entire process: making the music, collaborating with visual artists, promotion, etc. So, you have the creative freedom to decide how you want to show up in the musical landscape, how you collaborate with others, and share your art. The challenge is that you become your own project manager, marketing person, and content creator — and this might be less desirable for some people. With time, you might learn to appreciate the different perspectives that those roles imply, and you can look at releasing music as a holistic process. But, ideally, I’d like to be able to delegate some responsibilities to others, whilst maintaining ownership over the process.
How would you describe making a piece of music? Does it begin with a single note, or can it be influenced by something else you may have heard or watched from outside of music?
For me, music starts with some sort of intellectual stimulation, that is any concept (philosophical, psychological, artistic) that inspires me or that I’d like to explore through music-making. A concept could be as simple as examining impermanence or change through sound. Usually, this leads me to investigate certain tools and workflows that I feel might reflect this concept. Then sound will follow. I also try to develop melodies and harmonies separately, and those might find their way into certain setups and workflows. But I like to let the workflow lead the way.
Your music is both exhilarating and deeply atmospheric. Do you need to be in a certain frame of mind to create it?
The music that you hear on Fog is a collection of live performances that were developed as part of a larger research. I was mainly interested in contemplative modes of listening, composing, and performing. I use contemplative as a way to describe experiences that are characterised by self-reflection, like, for example, meditation. When we meditate, we direct our attention at something — an object — in the hopes of gaining some understanding about our own subjectivity: how we perceive reality. Contemplative listening might mean that I start noticing the effect of repetition, how my perception of a sound object changes and expands over time. Inversely, when creating music, i.e., performing and listening to it, can I enter this so-called contemplative state? Some people call it deep listening, and that is, in itself, a form of meditation.
Do you have a particular piece of software or hardware that you always like to use?
I’ve been using Ableton for a while and have found it to be most intuitive for all my production and performance needs. The EP was originally designed to be performed with a bespoke Eurorack setup, but nowadays I’m trying to be less rigid and have a more hybrid setup that combines software tools with hardware ones. I’m currently experimenting with the Make Noise Morphaghene as a source of inspiration, and I’m reading Curtis Roads book Microsound, which is like a granular-synthesis bible.
How do you see the future for musicians and how they finance what they do, in terms of streaming or live performance revenue?
That’s a loaded question, and I think that it deserves a loaded answer. It’s hard to see a positive future for music at the moment. The streaming landscape is leading us to perpetual excess — an inflation of music whose value keeps reducing the more of it is created (not to mention AI-generated music). The live industry is where musicians can see revenue, but I notice that with the current economic climate, people are more hesitant to buy tickets and watch live shows, and there isn’t enough government funding to undertake large-scale projects and support local venues and small artists. Without political change, that is changes in legislation and national budgets, I don’t know how musicians will be able to support themselves solely through their music-making. This material reality is influencing and will continue to influence the landscape of music, from an artform that is inclusive of different financial backgrounds, to one that is reserved for a small elite. It’s not rosy, but I think we need to be aware of this.
Outside of music, which artists, painters, writers or cinema etc have had the biggest impact on your creative life?
I’d like to think that aside from music, cinema plays a big role in my life. I’ve been a fan of Kubrick, Lynch, and the Cohen brothers since I was a teenager. I was also drawn to Christian Marclay’s aesthetics of discarded materials. I think that I subconsciously bring this “filmic” thinking into my composition. In fact, when we — myself, Yasmin, and Bea — were thinking about the visual concept for the EP, Eggers’ Lighthouse immediately came to mind, and that invoked the sound of a foghorn, which ended up in Guiding Still.
Tell us about any forthcoming plans?
I’m in the midst of writing more material and working on a new live show — more news soon!
Download/Stream JL Segel – Fog on all platforms
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