Name: Seb Martel

Nationality: French

Occupation: Composer, guitarist, songwriter
Current Release: Seb Martel's Saturn 63 is out via InFiné.
Recommendations: STEP ACROSS THE BORDER by Nicolas Humbert & Werner Penzel - 1990; FORCENÉS by Philippe Bordas (2008) (in French …sorry)

If you enjoyed this interview with Seb Martel  and would like to know more, visit his artist profile on the homepage of InFiné.



When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

Everything happened suddenly.

I was 15, deeply involved in competitive sports (soccer), with no taste at all for any music in my country. One night, back home after training, I fell on my father holding a red electric guitar as screaming crazy sounds came from an old tube amp. That unexpected scene just hypnotized me. I knew pretty much nothing about his forgotten experiences of performing during the sixties. This suddenly came up that night and it diverted me from my sport addiction.

I spent that night exploring, trying to wring sounds from that wild thing. From there I first started listening daily to music on the radio, LPs, and cassettes, discovering the different current waves (in 1985). Exactly one year later, I asked my dad for an electric guitar to push this new addiction as far as possible.

In our little town, I was perhaps the only non-academic musician, spending my new time learning the music my friends and relatives asked me to play, like rock, punk, blues and for some reason especially rockabilly. I was their jukebox. This came so abruptly that I didn’t have immediate idols, just passing from a song to another very different to make everybody around happy. 

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?

Blues brings me to tears, string quartets makes me dream, rap music energizes me, reggae music makes me dance, rthnic music re-centers me, electronic minimal music helps me focus, and awful mainstream music prevents me from laughing.

In parallel, any kind of feelings from good to ugly can procure musical forms. Sensitivity is a fantastic ideas-engine.

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

Routine is my enemy. I did too many of these invariable formatted shows with the French songwriter’s scene during the 90s. Then I got married to a wonderful dancer who brought me into the amazing world of contemporary dance (my comedian brother did the same for me with theatre), starting to create and perform on crazy pieces.

Choreographers (Alain Buffard / Thomas Lebrun / Christian Ubl / Nadia Beugre) and Directors (Dan Jemmett / Jean-Michel Rabeux / Benoit Bradel) pushed me to produce more and more varied, sharp, and evocative material on stage.

I’m now evolving with of a plethora of different artists from many different   origins and disciplines (live performances of any kind / recording sessions / productions), and my mind is always exploring polar opposites … it is a tiring, uncomfortable, and wonderful life.  

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

Identity is a trap word; strong minds can turn from providential guides to surreptitious cliché. Keeping the mind fresh is the key,  diversions / retirements / escapes / sports (I’m a cycling addict) can help.  

Self-mockery is my key word (a big effort for French people) - Dadaists fascinate me.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

You can get lost running after originality, but a minimal degree is required. Innovation is an exciting option, retrospection another as well.

The future is running quickly, tradition is walking gently, but all the same, they need each other; we are in between, able to link them.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?   
 
More than ever, the electric guitar to create, my bicycle to escape. These ordinary  fetishes never stop surprising me.

Saturn 63 (my new album) is the name of a crazy rare German guitar I discovered in between the dozens of guitars in the collection of the Musée de la musique (Philharmonie de Paris). InFiné (my new artist family label) brought me into that welcoming institution to create an album with this rare instrument — a real carte blanche. I had to invoke many subjects we talked about earlier to invent something on the spot.

I established a dogma: every single sound of that recording would come from these instruments and nothing else (except vox humana) … Constraint is a providential tool, and Ableton Live, too (I started making computer music at home for this project after refusing this process for 30 years).

The Bicycle is another instrument; beautiful, salutary, and dangerous.

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

Welcome to my home: wake up as early as possible, have a lukewarm shower, strech body / jump rope / cold shower outdoor, one liter of moroccan mint mint tea, season fruits and olives, radio news, admin / paperwork, and begin the workday. Not necessarily with composing, but rather practicing instrument / picking up notes / reading or writing scores / adaptation / arranging. Composing can occur anywhere, anytime.

Afternoons depend on what is happening at night (whether there is a show or not). This can be recording music / rehearsing for dance or plays or cycling for any reasons (from 1 to 200km) and just meeting people sometimes.

Evenings can turn from quiet (safe at home with family) to anxious (stage fright), in any case a glass of real red wine will be essential. Anyways, mornings are precious …

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

One of my best holy moments: the first meeting between actors / technicians / director / musicians / assistants to start the very first reading of a script (“Twelfth night” for example) - I stand by to be ready to play  / improvise / record / write. Everybody is coming in fresh / virgin / innocent / naïve / even clumsy in front of  the discovery of the text / words /expressions / voice sounds / dynamics. This brings me tons of sounds / rhythms / melodies / harmonic walks / traces / silences (same process for studio recording sessions sometimes).

That fresh food has to be digested in the following days, organized / selected / sorted / arranged but most of the times the truth is there, upside / inside / downside, for a second / a minute / an entire song … It is magic.

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

No preferences in terms of creating, every chance of doing something is worthwhile but I would say: impulsive creation comes from one mind (even in the middle of a big band).

Programmed creation is better with various people (the trio is my magic number), and the art of self-criticism is the next important step.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

That is a serious question for a fifty-year-old musician, standing between his completed body of work and the current musical environment. My views invite me to do more and more that is minimal / essential / distinctive in the face of the sounds on this planet.

I feel lost and dispirited as much as excited hearing new crazy tracks / young sounds / worldwide words / using innovative technologies. Music is now more fascinating than ever, it is everywhere / mixed / melted / messy / untraceable / reachable.

Traditions are persisting as blessed landmarks. The role of music can be twofold: both polluting our hearing and benefitting our listening.
 
Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

Music is a revealer or enhancer associated with scenes / screens / movements / pictures / drama and a fantastic vector of reflections by itself.

In this last case, two ways take shape: from a piece giving birth to spontaneous evocative feelings / a selected  topic brings special waves. Life or death could be credited sometimes …
 
How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?  

I must avoid not being inspired by this subject.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

At home, it can take me up to an hour to perfect an espresso, from cleaning the table, warming the cups, selecting the beans, finding the perfect grinder setting (my friends are patient) all for a 2mm beverage.

You see what I mean, there’s no difference at all … Same attention / same pain / same pleasure. I grew up in vineyards, and my father was into building. I spent real time admiring such crafts and am fascinated by conversing with artisans.

Looks like every kind of gesture is subject to art.

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

I am very happy about the notorious 33RPM revenge on the Compact Disc. Music absorption is first physiological, as you said, this step is very important, that explains the dire need of hearing live music, even just once  a year for most of the people.

I remember performing with my brother during all the first free weeks post COVID containment in front of an audience so thirsty and hungry for real sensations.

The art of live performing is at the top for me. The awareness of those special air movements is not first in our brains but everywhere else in our body … (I try my best to avoid crying by listening to Skip James on any mp3 devices)