Luke Sital-Singh is a British musician based in Bristol, UK.
Raised in the southwest London suburb of New Malden, indie folk singer/songwriter Luke Sital-Singh released his first EP, Fail for You, in late 2012. Produced by veteran Irish producer Iain Archer (Snow Patrol, Jake Bugg), the four songs had a haunting, intimate quality that drew comparisons to Bon Iver and Jeff Buckley, and earned Sital-Singh considerable airplay in the U.K. He released a second EP in the spring of 2013 called Old Flint, which opened the door to several tours and key spots on the U.K. festival circuit, and eventually landed him a deal with British major Parlophone Records. Tornados, his third EP and first for Parlophone, found him again working with Iain Archer and was released in late 2013. The EP found Sital-Singh expanding his usually spare sound with the introduction of a full complement of backing musicians, bringing a newfound complexity to his music. He then appeared on the BBC Sound of 2014 long list, and soon after confirmed the details of his debut album, The Fire Inside, which was due for release midway through that year. Two years later, Sital-Singh had split from his major-label and headed out to record what would be his sophomore album. Heading to the remote Attica Audio in Donegal, Ireland with producer Tommy McLaughlin (Villagers), Sital-Singh stripped back everything, being joined by just a small backing band to help deliver the personal and reflective 2017 release Time Is a Riddle.
Time Is A Riddle, is an album Sital-Singh was determined to make solely on his terms. No interference, no scheduling issues, nor elaborate musicianship, nothing big or brittle. Just care, and effort, and time well spent – values he shares with the Slow Movement to which he subscribes, and with the crafts people up and down the country with whom the musician has some special projects planned. It’s a lovely record of self-written songs, a crafted distillation of the ideas and tastes that have been percolating through Sital-Singh since he was a teenager in suburban southwest London, listening in awe to Damien Rice, since he was a rapt fan in the audience at a Ryan Adams gig in Brighton.
Recalling the music that made him, Sital-Singh – a singer with both soul and grit in his voice – says: “There was something about acoustic, singer-songwriter music that seemed more meaningful, and beautiful. I only like music that I feel like I can call beautiful. And to me that’s slow music, and more downbeat music. It’s a running joke amongst my friends that I’m a grumpy git,” he admits (and admits cheerfully). “But I’m not actually depressive. I’m just fairly introverted, quiet and pessimistic – but I’m happy being that. And songs are always the things I’ve been interested in, not the bells and whistles around the song. It’s purely about the song in its simplest form, and trying to craft that with just a guitar or just a piano. I’m obsessed with that.”
The EP Just a Song Before I Go arrived in November 2017. Early 2019 saw the release of the wistful single Love Is Hard Enough Without the Winter. Luke Sital-Singh’s third official studio album named A Golden State is due to arrive on 5 April 2019.
Genre: Singer/Songwriter