Interview: Luke Sital-Singh

For someone who’s been making music since they were around 8 years old – what’s kept you pushing along with your dream so far?

Um, it’s weird, I guess it comes with anything that you’re good at doing. I mean it only got- I’ve been kind of musical for a long time but I suppose it’s changed. In that time it’s like developed into something actually sustainable and kind of doable. It’s only been in the last 7, 8 or 9 years that it’s really felt like something I could actually do for a job or like, I’ve only been doing it actually to pay bills and stuff for 5 years or something like that so it’s kind of progressed quite a long time. You know it’s just something that I enjoy doing, and when you find something that you enjoy doing and that you’re quite good at doing, and that you can make enough money from, it’s kind of a bit of a no-brainer isn’t it really? [laughs] It just becomes something you do, and as a career it changes a lot. It’s not a boring job that’s for sure, sometimes I wish it was a little bit more boring because it is kind of fairly stressful and um, just like all over the place in terms of the lifestyle but at least it keeps you busy and on your toes. I’ve not gotten bored of it; it’s still a pretty fun thing to do.

Given that it’s been so all over the place in terms of the schedule, is there any point in your career where you’ve thought about going corporate?

Yeah loads of times, I mean I’m a bit of a pessimistic person really and I often- on the bad days can get really down on everything which is not a great trait because you start to be like “ah I just want to get a job in a bank” or like “I just want a paycheque” like an actual monthly- y’know just to be able to count on some money coming in more regularly. But then you speak to someone and it’s like nothing’s ever a given really – anyone can lose their job at any point. I have to sometimes just punch myself over the head and be like “Mate, you’re doing it! You’re doing this thing that you’ve always wanted to do! There’s tonnes of people that would love to be in your position so like, just enjoy it.” I mean that’s only on my really kind of bad days, most of the time I just know that there wouldn’t be anything that I could do that I would enjoy as much and I would regret it instantly if I was to give up and get some boring job. It would be an instant “what have I done?!” kind of thing, so yeah it’s only on the really bad times that I question the whole thing. 

Around this time about 5 years ago, you hadn’t yet been on your own tour. Obviously now you’ve got your own UK tour coming up next week, and have been touring since. Is there anything about life on the road that’s shocked you or that you hadn’t expected to see prior?

Um… it’s a lot less fun than I thought [laughs] it’s a lot less like exciting. I think I thought that the day-to-day travelling stuff would be more exotic and fun and exciting. The thing is, partly because of my set up in terms of being a solo artist; I don’t really tour with a band so you don’t really have a group of mates that you’re hanging out with. It’s usually just me and like the tour manager. But even when I have done a couple of tours with a band it’s kind of just like “oh! I thought touring was going to be amazing but I’m just eating Ginsters Pasties from another petrol station and not getting much sleep”, but then you do the gig and everything’s amazing! You think “this is the best job in the world!” I guess I wasn’t prepared for the ups and downs of a tour, because you do go from super elation, adrenaline rush of the gig to getting back in the crappy van and driving to a Travelodge and then waking up the next day in some crap Travelodge and you’re like “ughhh”. So yeah, it’s very contrasting in that way. 

And so if you did have an unlimited budget for a show, but you could only perform three of your songs – which songs would you choose and how would you perform them?

Oh wow! Um, that’s a really good question! I would do- well there’s one song on my first album called “Nearly Morning” which is on the album in one way but there’s another version of that song. On the album it’s fairly subdued like guitar-y, piano-y kind of nice harmonies but yeah it’s fairly sad. There’s another version that we did, when we were recording it we wanted to do something different and it was like proper epic, crazy, stadium anthem, choirs, like massive, bombastic performance! But the label said that it was annoying [laughs] and it’s not out there but it’s on my hardrive and I’ve always been like “One day, when I have a 10 piece band, and an orchestra, and all that, I’ll play this song, the way that we intended it to be on the album”. That’s number one. 

Um, weirdly there are some songs that I would still play on my own. Maybe with- there’s a song called “I Have Been A Fire” which I love performing, and I would play it solo but there’s a point where like it explodes, and I would definitely have like fire and pyrotechnics going and just exploding on the stage – 100%. Then there’s also one song on this new album – Time Is A Riddle – called “Nowhere Is Home” and at the end, on the album version it explodes into this heavy rock outro type thing, so like a somewhat Radiohead influenced outro, and I think I would just love to have a band for that one bit. They can just be there for that one tiny bit of that song, which would be a massive waste of money but they would all appear from underneath the ground or something. And one other! The last song on the album is called “Slow Down” and at the end it’s like imploding and it’s all this distortion and it goes all crazy. It’s a very Sigur Ros type song, and I would probably just pay them lots of money just to come on stage and it would turn into like a big Sigur Ros gig at the end. 

As much as your music sparks emotions in people, be it melancholia or even optimism; what are you hoping will shine through the most on this upcoming album?

Um, I don’t know, it’s tricky. I don’t think about that too much. I think for me, when I listen to music I like to feel like I’ve been understood and to feel like I’m not alone and there’s somebody else going through the same kind of questions and the same kind of- exploring life in a deeper way or exploring what it means to be alive. That’s why I listen to music and my favourite artists instil that in me… so I would like that really! Just for people to feel like there’s been a space for them to feel things and to feel like it’s okay to feel those things, whatever it is- it’s okay to feel y’know mostly sad with my music. We’re all on the same journey really, just trying to figure out what the heck to do with our lives. I think that this album is probably more confused than the first one in terms of whether there’s one message saying “it’s going to be alright” (like the first one) but this album is more saying “is it? I don’t know” [laughs]. But yeah I’d still want people to feel understood.

And seeing as you said that this album is a little bit more confused than the first; do you feel like your writing style has changed in that same way or do you feel like you still write very similarly to how you always have?

I definitely, on this album, thought about it less. I tend to overthink in general life and on the first album everything was very thought out and I had to know what I was talking about and I had to know what everything meant, what every line meant, and with this album I’ve dropped that a lot and I just wanted to let the subconscious speak and trust that there was stuff to be said that I didn’t quite understand. So there’s one song on here that came to me in a dream and that’s something that I’ve always found sort of suspicious when people would say that like “oh, this song came to me in a dream” and I’m like “yeah, yeah ‘course it did”, but I genuinely woke up singing the chorus and this is the song “Rough Diamond Falls” like track four. Yeah, I experienced this place which was like heaven and hell mixed together and then the chorus melody and words were just ringing in my head when I woke up and I just wrote the song and that’s never happened before. There’s lots of things like that where I’ve just tried to let things flow and just react to it in that way and so in some ways that’s probably why it’s a bit more confused, because I wasn’t trying to find the answers to what was coming out. I wasn’t trying to kind of round it all up and summarise what my mind was trying to say.

After listening to your Film Songs record quite recently, I was wondering, if you had the chance to work on any film soundtrack of your choice which would you pick and why?

I would happily score a Wes Anderson film but using songs mostly, and it would be a really depressing Wes Anderson film, I would happily do that. Um, to be really geeky about it, any Star Wars- like any John Williams soundtrack really, I’m a big Star Wars geek. What’s amazing about the new Star Wars film- we’re probably going to die before they stop making Star Wars films and that gives you all the options. I mean it’s a long shot that someone would ask me to score a Star Wars film – how cool would that be?! They’d be a crazy person [laughs] I don’t know why anyone would listen to my music and go “Hey! You can score a Star Wars film!” [laughs]They’d be a crazy person but I’d still say yes.  I would love to write songs for anything really – it’s something I’d need to be interested in doing but I never really write songs from a brief like when you write songs for films. I think I would struggle to do that but it would be fun! I’d definitely like to do something like that.

You’ve had quite an eclectic music taste over the years listening to firstly grunge music and then delving into more alternative music such as Damien Rice and Bon Iver. What kind of music have you been listening to lately and in the lead up to the album?

Um, there’s a load of great albums coming out at the moment! I’ve been listening to Feist’s new album Pleasure. When I was writing the album I was listening to her second album Metals so that was a bit of an influence on how I wanted it- it didn’t end up sounding anything like Feist but there was something about that record that inspired me when I was writing. I’m listening to a lot of Spoon albums, which is a bit more Indie/Rock band type thing which I’ve been getting into more and more. My music taste recently and I guess like over the last 10 years, has been fairly Singer/Songwriter-centric and I’ve been listening to more bands, and like the new War On Drugs single is great. I’ve been trying to delve into Ryan Adams’ stuff – he’s just released loads of his b-sides from his new album, it’s like 17 b-sides, so yeah those are the few things that I’m listening to at the moment. 

Keep up with Luke's movements over the next few weeks of touring, and check out his new album Time Is A Riddle out on Friday, here on Facebook, Instagram, his Website and Spotify.