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After its release last Friday, Sydney Minsky Sargeant gives Live4ever an exclusive track-by-track guide on his debut solo album ‘Lunga’.
Lunga‘s purpose has been underlined by Sydney Minsky Sargeant revealing that the dynamic is, ‘another way of saying we are all one and the same deep down and that we should try to remember that a little more. In a world that has never felt so scary and polarised, I just hope this album connects with people’.
The opening part at least brings with it some intimacy, For Your Hand a finger picked acoustic token of longing that looks back to the folk rock classicists, whilst the equally pastoral shades of I Don’t Wanna glide conspiratorially by with: “Confide in me / I’ll put down everyone / I’ll put down everything / If loving this is wrong then I don’t wanna be right.”
It’s a hazy mood, one which persists through the reflective, gently orchestrated Lisboa, but the many posthumous lovers of Nick Drake will delight in the gently picked Long Roads, a sublime reappraisal of an artist that took away an older Britain on his death and with that, its key.
If that had no hope of lasting, then a full stop is called by the near eight-minute ambient drone Lunga (Interlude), whilst the psychedelic dream pop of A Million Flowers could be an alternative universe Damon Albarn if he’d gone to school in Halifax.
Click here for Live4ever’s ‘Lunga’ review in full
Intro
I wanted to gently open the album. The intro was the remedy to that. We used the guitar stems from For Your Hand and mangled them using a Tasty Chips Granular Synthesiser. It ensured that the intro was in the same key as For Your Hand but texturally it held its own place within the record.
World building was an important part of the production of Lunga. I felt like it was important to create a natural bed of ambience that created some space away from the more vocally upfront songs.
Subtraction and minimalism is just as vital as maximalism and in order to allow the listener to reflect on the lyrical content. I felt like space and ambience had to be used throughout the album.
For Your Hand
Me and Alex Greaves recorded this in a day as we had some spare time after recording I Don’t Wanna (if I’m remembering that correctly).
The thing that makes this recording special in my opinion is the way we recorded the vocals. The main vocal was recorded super close to the mic and then I moved further around the room when recording the BVs. I think that’s what gives this recording so much air.
I Don’t Wanna
I remember it actually taking me a bit of time to get my head around this recording. I’d become so used to distorting the hell out of my vocals as Working Men’s Club, or at least processing them pretty heavily.
When I took this version home I felt overwhelmed by how dry the vocal we’d gone with was, as well as some of the instrumental components.
It felt like being naked in front of some else for the first time. Despite it feeling loose and unregimented, I grew to enjoy it for what it was and I leaned articulating a human side of the production after living with this one for a while.
Lisboa
This was the first tune me and Alex worked on as part of Lunga. It became the catalyst for the rest of the album.
Everything came together so quickly. We recorded, produced and mixed the song in two days. The process was so inspiring and to this day it remains one of my fondest memories of being in a studio.
Long Roads
For some reason we went around the houses with Long Roads. This was one of the only songs on Lunga that me and Alex got a bit stuck on.
For the first couple of days it was hard to tell whether we were doing the song justice or not as we were just throwing paint at the wall and not feeling very compelled by any of the results.
On the night of the second day we went back to Alex’s flat, shared a curry and proceeded to get very drunk. A lot of beer and wine was consumed and tears were shed (me being the one crying [I used to do that] a lot).
The next day we were both tired and very hungover. As soon as we opened Protools and listened back to what we’d been working on it just felt too major and fast. We’d used the tape machine previously on Lisboa and it felt like the right time to turn it back on.
We fed the whole track through the 24-track Studer A827 2″ tape machine slowing and pitching everything down a semitone (and a few cents). It immediately felt better and like we were onto something.
I quickly went and recorded what was supposed to just be a guide vocal and immediately everything began to click. In the end I think we just put the two track instrumental through the tape machine and when it came to processing all the stems so that they were the same pitch and speed as the two track instrumental.
We just used the varispeed function inside Protools because we’d recorded some additional live drums…however, who cares, it still did the job.
Summer Song
This was a hodge podge idea I’d initially had kicking around but never thought anything of. Alex loved it which surprised me but at the time I don’t think I actually had any other songs that felt like they cut the mustard as contenders for this record.
We basically recorded a more tripped out version of the demo, however everything was elevated and I wrote another verse at the studio recycling a lyric from another idea I had kicking around (“Empty birdcage in the sky be my vessel”).
We got the MS20 out and went to town making drum sounds and vowel-like sirens that we blurred with the “Ooze” vocals.
I think this is a good example of using synthetic and human textures together to make otherworldly sounds, that became a bit of a feat in places on this album.
Chicken Wire
We had a lot of fun making this one. I asked Alex to pinch the MS20 from Studio 3 at the Nave so that I could show him some of the tricks Ross had taught me when producing the first two WMC records.
I started making drum sounds with the MS20 as well as little bleeps and bass lines. In order to execute Chicken Wire in a way where it could stand up on its own I felt like it couldn’t just be a straight up sea shanty style vocal and acoustic guitar tune. It had to have other moments and flavours of madness immersed within it.
The result was this recording. There were some great and dumb get around we had to do when recording drums (particularly on this tune). Neither me or Alex are drummers (me particularly).
However given we were the only people in the room for 99% of the time, if we did want to record live drums we had to do it ourselves, somehow, whatever it took.
When recording Chicken Wire I played all the drums for the first half of the tune (excluding the kick drum) then we’d swap roles and I’d record Alex just playing the kick drum. It was hilarious and silly but it worked (and is another great memory).
Hazel Eyes
Lyrically this is a deep song and not one that I really want to divulge into the meaning of. However, I felt like we captured something special and meaningful to me on this recording.
I never intended to share this song with anyone, however I felt that it belonged on this record if I wanted to execute the concept for the album as honestly as possible.
This was the first tune we used the Roland System 100 101 and 102 units together. I’d used some of my modular stuff on Summer Song and the 100 (101) standalone on some of the other songs, but had never used the 101 in tandem with the 102 unit. I felt overjoyed at the results.
The siren/human wailing type sound is a concoction of the 101/2 and a vocal texture we’d recycled from the demo. This is another example of pairing something synthetic with something natural to try and create an otherworldly sound.
I felt like it articulates some of the inner thoughts and feelings I had at the time that I couldn’t put into words.
Lunga (Interlude)
Some people will probably find this boring and self indulgent because of the length and format, but it carries a weight of meaning to me.
I wasn’t in a great place at the time and I think this highlights a moment of insanity and despair, but also the idea of regeneration. Turning a sour situation into something more hopeful.
Becoming a Lunga or realising that I am a Lunga… just another person floating on top a rock in space overthinking the smallest things, making mistakes but trying to find the beauty in life rather than dwelling on the negatives and experiences, things and people that I cannot change or control.
Rebeginning but not forgetting where I came from or resenting anyone or anything.
A Million Flowers
This is the only song on the record that doesn’t just feature me and Alex. I’d been putting this one off for a while because I hadn’t had the time to relearn the song.
Finally I got around to it, and me and Alex began to discuss how we’d approach the production. We loosely floated the idea of tracking it live with other people all in one room (live band style).
However, I don’t think Alex saw that as being something we would do imminently. The night of the day that we had that conversation I went to my local pub and was serendipitously introduced to, as the Landlady put it, “drummer with no ego”. The man in question was Chris Smith.
We’d never met before, but being the spontaneous person that I am I invited him to the studio to track drums the next day. Liam from WMC was also at the pub that night and so I invited him in too (to play bass). He quickly agreed.
I then went home and text Hannah, asking her if she would be up for singing the backing vocals. Just like that an idea became a reality and the next day we tried to capture the concept we’d discussed. The result was this recording.
We tracked Liam and Chris playing bass and drums together, then everything else was overdubbed on top of that.
How It Once Was
This was a very different song to start with in comparison to what it became. It was a bit of a throwaway Dark Side Of The Moon esque song to begin with. Just me and a 12 string.
We took it apart and stitched it back together using drum machines and synths for the most part, rather than making the guitar the main accompaniment to the vocal. I think this acted as a nice metaphor for the lyrics.
The heart and soul of the instrumental is euphoric and synthetic, but then it all falls apart and becomes something natural, human and somewhat melancholy/unhinged.
At the time of writing and then recording this song I don’t think I was aware of how profound or important it would be in being the penultimate conclusion to an album of mine, but in my opinion that’s what it became.
New Day
It’s a pretty self explanatory title. This song concludes the album. Contains some meta style lyrics that reference previous songs on the record and alludes to some hope within the darkness but also some darkness within the hope.
I wanted to conclude the album by imagining a more beautiful, honest and compelling world to the one I was living in at the time of writing this song. It’s a reality that I dreamed of and wanted to reach.
It’s an idealistic song but I like the sentiment. It provoked me to really work on myself since and try to turn a new leaf and see my life and lived experience through a more rational and grown up lens.
In an existential way I guess it marks the end of my adolescence, but in a simpler way I guess it acts a metaphor for taking each day as it comes and trying to live in the present as much as possible and take each day as it comes.
There isn’t always hope in the new day but sometimes there is, and the idea of hope is what got me through some of my darkest moments.
