Echoes of a madcap infuse this oddly delightful solo debut.

Release Date : 12th September 2025

Label : Domino

Format : CD / Vinyl / Digital

NOMINALLY NORMAL

Quite a mouthful that name, having me wonder whether that was the one he was born with. Forgive me, as I am not poking fun, but rather more casting a long eye over that choice of first name, as will become unveiled. Is it his birth name or has he adopted it? As in, I would like to see the records he grew up with. Having said that, raised in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, that may be all the explanation needed, with names currently less well travelled, still all finding traction in the West Riding. We’ll return to this question in due course.

These last seven or so years Minsky Sargeant has been the force behind Working Men’s Club, the fiery and feisty agit-synth band their sometime record label described as “the Heavenly sound of young Yorkshire“. OK, the capital H hives away the play on quite which record label it was, but they still had a point, that is if your idea of heaven is soundtracked by anger and anxiety mapped out on an array of synthesisers, two fingers at a time.

Almost by accident, I caught the 4 piece band at Glastonbury, 2023, commenting then: “singularly dystopian electro-post punk“, with a frontman “engaging and effervescent, a lost love child of Ian Curtis and Mick Jagger, moving and shaping all over the stage, forgetting never when to press the next button on his gadgetry, his singing impassioned and maniacal.” That front man Minsky Sargeant, with or without hyphen, the writer also of all their material.

FOLK SONG FROM A HAUNTED CRYPT

Lunga has been a work in genesis ever since he first began to put pen to paper and finger to keyboard, songs kept aside from his band work, some thus arising from a teenager’s bedroom, others more recent. As a result, his influences run riot over the 12 tracks, with perhaps the moody opener the one most might expect of him. Entitled Intro, that is all it is, a snippet of cascading electronic keyboard, lasting barely a minute.

Perceptions made and preconceptions cemented, they shatter as a guitar then clangs resonantly, two guitars, one electric, another acoustic, ahead the heavily echoed and multi-tracked vocal of For Your Hand. With a distorted piano adding in some discordant melody. It sounds like a folk song from a haunted crypt, or one of the quieter moments from early Hawkwind LPs. It is rather good.

I Don’t Wanna pairs that acoustic guitar with the rhythmic pad of an electronic drum kit. The vocals are a commentary, the melodies seeping in more by the textures and tones of synths that sweep around his voice. A percussive ping begins to repeat from the instrumental “chorus”, before Minsky Sergeant raises his voice into a plea: “If loving this is wrong then I don’t wanna be right”. It is all gloriously woozy and possibly not what had been expected, with Lisboa taking a further step into the languid dreamscape. Guitar strums silkily, with Minsky Sargeant intoning his uncertainties, a piano picking out slow individual notes. This could be early Pink Floyd, an outtake from Ummagumma. It might be about Lisbon, but it is unclear and, as the singer says, repeatedly, “I don’t know, I don’t know“.

THE TROUBLED MR B

Long Roads drops the penny, the ever more echoed vocal and acoustic guitar even more Floyd, or possibly, think laterally, Floyd adjacent. I have no idea, the name is not mentioned in his press, but surely the sound of another Syd(ney) is instructing many the songs here, and that Syd is Barrett. True, as the track builds, there is more technology than was available to the troubled Mr. B., as electronic background layers pile gradually in. Piano and synth end it on a circular turnaround, at odds with the main theme. Summer Song then goes all weird(er) on us, a hazy shadow of synthetic sounds. Trippy rhythmic kosmische engages, hauling the song into the sort of hypnagogic state that, were it not to fizzle out at around 4 minutes, might have you nodding all night. “Empty birdcage in the sky, be my vessel“, indeed!

Chicken Wire, with rolling raga like electric guitar, further ups the Syd, the lyrics creeping into, if not Madcap Laughs territory, certainly wide smiles. The tremendous percussive crashes add all the punctuation the words mightn’t. At the half way mark the guitars pile into rockabilly overdrive, the vocals now their psychobilly cousin. You may, by this stage, be thinking this is all a bit much, and, if that thought was certainly materialising, he’s not letting go yet, as Hazel Eyes wafts in. To be fair, that frantic overdrive has been left behind, and it is slow lysergic saunter, with an agreeable wash of background synths moaning at the edges. Possibly a favourite?

END OR INTERLUDE

The title track, with interlude in brackets, is sort of just that, a return/reprise of Intro, where the string section get lifted from Last One, the closing sequence from Fear Fear, the last Working Man’s Club release. It’s to mark closure, I guess, with that band: “I wanted to come to various points of resolve…and then move on“, he says. (But fans needn’t despair, as new band material is complete and on the way.) 7 minutes of dystopia, it feels possibly too long, but A Million Flowers, which restarts the album, benefits from that diversion. Yes, it remains in a similar style and time-bubble as the earlier songs, if now the more complex post-Syd tone poems that his erstwhile band mates were coming up with. A gently beautiful song, the guitar sings around his voice, and those of the diesmbodied souls who join, shortly ahead the end.

How It Once Was beckons in a feel of an ending, with a mechanical beat to drive it forward. A chorus of sirens add a ghostly chorale, as the song builds layer upon layer of sequenced synth. There is a more optimistic flavour about it, despite the maudlin meandering of melody, and wouldn’t disgrace the Human League, in one of Oakey’s more minor chord latter day musings. The final track, New Day, is more mournful feelgood, and, if I’m not over-egging the references, it is pure Roger Waters, or, at least, I can “hear” him singing it, the album bookended with the sound of falling rain.

A MYSTERIOUS MICRO-CLIMATE

I am not quite sure what I was expecting. WMC this is not like at all, which may disappoint some, but should usher in a whole new audience to those who can still see the join and remain in the fray. And I think it confirms quite what a mysterious micro-climate is the upper Calder Valley.

A video taster, I Don’t Wanna:

Sydney Minsky Sargeant online : Website / Facebook (WMC) / Instagram

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