Music: Luke Sital-Singh
The former BIMM student is back with a fantastic debut album and a date in Brighton
A glut of singer songwriters? Yes. But can you ever get enough of really good singer songwriters? No. Luke Sital-Singh is a great one, that’s for sure. And with the release of his excellent debut album The Fire Inside, released on the legendary Parlophone label (The Beatles, Blur, Radiohead et al), and a headline tour in motion, it’s all starting to fall into place. But he nearly never made it out of the starting blocks … “I was deciding whether to do music or go to a standard university and study English. I chose music. It gave me a lot of time to focus on it and meet other musicians, and Brighton (Luke studied at BIMM) is a good place to play gigs.”
From New Malden (birthplace of both John Martyn and Jamie Woon), and with a heritage that includes not only India, but Wales and Jamaica, Sital-Singh was heavily influenced by Damien Rice’s O: “That was the DNA I took to becoming a singer songwriter. I learnt all his songs and performed them at gigs. It means a lot to me as a starting point.”
Enrolling at BIMM enabled Sital-Singh to meet future collaborators, including the producer of The Fire Inside (Iain Archer) and his current manager Julian Deane, who happened to audition Luke for his place.
But, despite graduating with a degree in Professional Musicianship, Sital-Singh nearly called it a day as he struggled to gain any traction as a solo performer. “I didn’t release my first record until I moved back to London. I had a dead-end job and it was taking all my energy, and I could just see myself losing the will to do the music stuff. But once I started working with Julian it all started to fall into place. I made the first EP, Fail For You, in 2012, and it developed after that.”
With the release of The Fire Inside, things are certainly hotting up for Luke. As well as performing at Glastonbury and Latitude this summer, he’s currently on a UK tour. The Fire Inside is both a big and epic album of songs mixed in with some more intimate moments. When he goes for it, he sounds vocally not unlike Paul Young, but comparisons with Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver) are just as favourable. “For this tour it will be just me and a bass player, Paul Steel, another of Julian’s artists. He is a bit of a whizz on bass… it’s nice to do the stripped back thing; intimate and raw. I’m looking forward to coming back to Brighton!”
The Haunt, Tues 9 Sept, 7pm, £9
Jeff Hemmings
