Now Spinning Music Magazine - Artist Interviews and Music Reviews · Phil Aston

Nad Sylvan on Monumentata: Grief, Soul, and the Songs That Found Him

·35 min·2 clips

Nad Sylvan links his album title to his father’s phrase “Tata,” Hungarian for daddy.

1. Now Spinning Music Magazine speaks with Nad Sylvan about Monumentata, a solo album tied to family memory, grief, and legacy. 2. Phil Aston hosts, and Nad Sylvan appears as vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and Steve Hackett band frontman whose name matters to Genesis listeners. 3. The episode asks how Monumentata became a personal record and how Sylvan turns lived experience into songs. 4. Sylvan says the songs were conceived, written, and recorded over about three years before the album’s theme became clear. 5. He names “Wildfire” as one of the first tracks he started and says it took a long time because he kept changing the intro and outro. 6. He explains that the Monte Carlo travels of his parents before his birth helped inspire “Priceless.” 7. He says “Priceless” is not literally about his mother, but it includes parallels to an abusive relationship and his father’s drinking problem. 8. Sylvan describes his father’s death in July last year at age 96 and says that event changed the direction of the song that became “Monumentata.” 9. He says his father once told him, “you could call me Tata,” and he used that Hungarian word for daddy in the title. 10. He says the title also reflects the “monumental” feeling of both parents being gone, which gave the album its theme. 11. Sylvan says he added more of his own life to the lyrics, including his sexuality and the losses of failed relationships. 12. He says that choice helped him connect with fans in a more real way and helped him connect with his own lyrics. 13. He says the title-track lyrics came “on the fly,” using the morning-after breakfast story as a direct source. 14. He says his father left before he came on stage in Los Angeles in 2016, and that became part of the song’s emotional core. 15. Sylvan says he usually hears ideas in his head and records them into his phone before deciding whether a passage belongs on guitar or keyboard. 16. He says “Secret Lover” began as a guitar riff in his head, while “Flowerland” became a song about an older hippie couple still together after years of life. 17. The interview is reflective and practical, with Aston asking detailed questions about songwriting order, tour life, and vocal technique. 18. Sylvan answers in a plainspoken, self-correcting style, including a moment where he asks what “intrinsic” means. 19. Fans of progressive rock, Steve Hackett, and personal songwriting about family loss will likely connect with this episode. 20. Listeners wanting fast-moving gossip or abstract music talk will probably skip it.

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