Blending heartfelt storytelling with classic pop and experimental sounds, Sean MacLeod reflects on loss, inspiration, and creative evolution — from the moving “Beautiful Star” to his upcoming projects New Start and We Don’t See.
The song was born out of quite a tragic incident. My friend and his partner’s new born baby died shortly after being born. When I heard the news, I sat at the piano and the song just fell out of me. The lyric in the chorus “We don’t even know your name but we’re glad you came” came fully formed with the chords and the melody. Over a short time the rest of the lyrics came together and I just started to rehearse it with a group of musicians and each of them added their part. When I went to record it the musicians laid down their parts and the producer, Robsonic, decided to layer harmonies over it, including the female vocal, which personally I think really makes the song sound unique. So, in effect I had very little to do with the recording and the overall sound of the track. Even the chords, melody and the initial lyric had really little to do with me. I was given those by Muses. I just provided the finished lyric really. It does have a kind of 70s prog rock feel or at least a kind of early 70s Bowie feel and I think that’s to do with the chordal structure which is a little bit more elaborate than the usual pop song. I am a big fan of Bowie’s first records- Space Oddity to Hunky Dory, so I’m sure that influence found its way into the song.
I don’t find it particularly difficult since I have been my whole life immersed in pop music and quite a long-time reading philosophy and religious works. My degree was in Philosophy and English literature. I don’t know if it always works. I just like singing about more involved subjects and probably Bowie’s work in that regard is an influence as too are the mid Beatles’ period like Strawberry Fields Forever.
I can’t really think of anything specific that stayed with me. Mostly, I learned how to write songs and how to arrange them for a four/five-piece band. We had five very talented songwriters in Cisco and we really learned from each other. Probably the thing I learned most was to trust your initial idea because if that excites you and you put a lot of attention in to finishing it usually means it’s a song that has some value. When the rest of the instruments are added they usually enhance the song a greatly. It was really valuable having a group of like-minded musicians around me to hear the transformation that takes place with a basic song once the other instruments are added to it. It was also interesting to see how the song could sound after the production process, which is something that working with Paul and other producers made me aware of. A song can sound totally different once it goes into the studio. Paul was a very talented producer and he produced some really good sounding records for Cisco but sometimes, I felt, that they didn’t really sound like Cisco as they sounded when they played live, so to speak.
I still love all that 60s music, the approach to song writing, the melodies and the arrangements. I suppose it’s the beginning of what is expected to day from a song. I was so immersed in that style of music that it’s hard for me to get away from its influence. In the last few years, I really feel I want to do things that are very different to this more traditional approach. I recorded an album over the last two years called We Don’t See That We Don’t See and that was an attempt for me to explore something very different to what I would normally do. I explored a lot of different tuning systems and tried to delve into a lot more Avant Garde music, composers like Harry Partch and Terry Riley. However, at the end of the day I realised it just sound like the Beatles when they ventured into Indian music and psychedelia – so there’s no real getting away from them.
Well I suppose I’ve already spoken about We Don’t See, New Start is a new album although while it has some recently recorded material it has quite a few songs that I hadn’t released. One particular song called “I’ve Seen You Around” was part of the We Don’t See project. It was recorded using an alternative tuning called Pythagorean tuning in which the individual tones are much more pure than standard tuning. It’s rather a complicated subject, tuning systems and I don’t want to bore your readers with the ins and outs of it all, but the tuning is rather different sounding- it feels lighter and more open than standard tuning. I also used a lyre ( a kind of small harp) to compose the piece on. Lyres are easy to tune to alternative tunings because they are just open strings with no frets and they are relatively easy to play too. So by using this tuning and this new instrument ( new for me that is) something rather unique was created. I put it on the New Start album because I it felt very much like a pop song. I think it was a good example of me attempting to find a kind of newer direction for my music. So if people what to listen to ‘I’ve Seen You Around’ they can find it on various platforms like Bandcamp or Soundcloud.
If I’m still inspired to write songs and the ideas keep coming I’ll keep writing songs. There’s lots of things- like alternative tunings and different instruments, like the lyre and also instruments like microtonal instruments that I am quite excited to explore and see where that leads and what music comes from it. So I think there’s a lot to explore and be excited about.
Copyright © 2025 The Inteviewist
