Nad Sylvan on ‘Monumentata’: Family, Healing, and the Long Road to Finding His Voice
Interview by Phil Aston, Now Spinning Magazine
Nad Sylvan has long been the charismatic voice fronting Steve Hackett’s band, delivering Genesis classics with heart-stopping intensity. With his new solo album Monumentata, he turns that same intensity inward—into a reflective, deeply personal song cycle about family, memory, loss, and the stubborn artistry that kept him going for decades.
Across our conversation, Nad opens up about the stories behind the songs, how music arrives “fully formed” in his head before a lyric is written, and how a painful moment with his father eventually crystallised the album’s central theme.
“Monumentata”: how the theme found him
Nad didn’t set out to write a concept album. The songs “were conceived, written and recorded over about three years,” he explains, with early standouts like “Wildfire” evolving slowly as he reworked intros and outros until they finally “clicked.”
The turning point came after his father passed away (aged 96). Remembering how his dad—half-Hungarian—once said “you could call me ‘Tata’,” Nad felt the word “monumental” collide with “Tata”: Monumentata. That single spark reframed the album around legacy, grief, and the emotional weather fronts that shape a life. From there, songs drawing on parental histories, youthful travels (the Monte Carlo thread), sexuality, and relationship fallouts naturally gathered around the title track’s gravitational pull.
“When my father passed, I heard the word monumental and remembered he said, ‘Call me Tata.’ Monumentata suddenly made sense.”
Writing process: music first, lyrics when the emotion is clear
Nad is a multi-instrumentalist who plays most of what you hear. But the real magic, he says, happens before he touches an instrument: ideas arrive in his head, which he hums into his phone and later assigns to guitar or keys.
Lyrics come last—always shaped by the music’s emotional temperature. “You can probably feel what the lyric will be about just from the music,” he notes. That’s why the title track could hold lines like “Did you say you had to leave?”—drawn straight from the morning his father didn’t show up for their planned breakfast in Los Angeles back in 2016.
“The melody tells me what the lyric wants to be. I wait until the song’s form and feeling are there—then the words arrive.”
Songs that land “in the heart centre”
Two songs he lingers on:
“Secret Lover” – powered by a riff that lived in his head for ages before he tracked it.
“Flowerland” – a favourite, about an old hippie couple looking back with curiosity still intact. Nad loves its structure: “You’re not quite sure what is verse, bridge, or chorus—it just links together in a special way.”
There’s soul in this record—classic, 60s/70s-rooted soul folded into progressive textures—giving the performances warmth, grain, and humanity.
“I love merging classic soul with prog. Not many prog artists do that—and it brings the emotion straight to the listener.”
The father story: pain, reflection… and art
Nad recounts the night in 2016 when his father travelled to see him perform but, after drinking too much, left the venue before Nad took the stage. The next morning’s missed breakfast became the opening image in the “Monumentata” lyric. Writing the song wasn’t exactly “healing”—he’d been processing all this for years—but it did give shape to the feeling of being, as the gatefold notes say, “an orphan now.” Many listeners of Steve Hackett’s older-skewing audience will recognise that ache—and find comfort in hearing it articulated so honestly.
“I dug the lines straight out of life: Did you say you had to leave? Would you stick to what’s agreed? That morning never left me.”
On tour with Steve Hackett: the museum doors and the tears
As he heads to the USA—seven weeks, 29 shows—Nad talks about the strange intensity of the road and the moments that stop him cold. In Vicenza, returning for “Supper’s Ready,” he saw a man in his sixties fall to his knees in tears on the first line. Nad’s voice cracked; the song almost cracked with it. “It hit me right in the heart.”
Touring the Genesis canon, he adapts: his natural range today is baritone, so he’s reinvented technique to meet those youthful, sky-high vocal lines. For his own work, the songs are built around his present voice.
“I’m a natural baritone now. With Genesis I adapt. With my own records, the songs are tailor-made for my voice today.”
Persistence and stubborn faith
It took forty years for Nad to make music his profession. He calls them “the hungry years,” when he wasn’t the flavour of the month and Sweden was a hard place to break through if you didn’t follow trends. What kept him going? Stubbornness, self-belief, and a ruthless ear for getting things right.
He doesn’t chase the new for its own sake—preferring old radio, Seals & Crofts, Joni, and any modern record that genuinely speaks (he cites Jacko Jakszyk’s recent album). The thread through Unifaun, Agents of Mercy, Steve Hackett and now Monumentata is simple: keep the dream alive.
“I was always a strong believer—but very self-critical. I hang on until it sounds right.”
Nad sells directly via nadsylvan.com (store may pause while he’s on tour), and he’s taking signed CDs on the U.S. run with Steve Hackett.
Monumentata carries weight—but it also carries light. It’s personal without being closed off, and it invites listeners to lay their own stories alongside Nad’s. If you love the drama and atmosphere of classic prog but crave soul and lived-in emotion, this album lands where it matters most.
“With Monumentata I wanted to connect in a real way—so people could see me, and maybe see themselves.”
ORDER DIRECT FROM NAD SYLVAN HERE
Phil Aston | Now Spinning Magazine
