When we talk about mixing music traditions with contemporary fashions, modern cultural sounds with more of-the-moment, forward-thinking music sonics, we have to take into account that those things mean different things in different places on the map. After all, geography will always play as big a part as genre, each countries quintessential sounds being as vast and varied as the modern music world.
And so it is with Husfikbur, the second album from Sehore. Although there are the traditional sounds of the Latin and Medditeranian world that we associate with his Spanish homeland, found all the way through the album, right from the start he signals his intent to blend and balance, mix and merge opposing sounds and styles, the opening salvo “Bossa Velha” being a mix of swaying and seductive bossa nova and squalling rock onslaughts.
The album is as much about an experiment in where music can take you as it is about songs and lyrical messaging, an adventure in dismantling and reconstructing the familiar into more exciting and obscure, yet no less rich and rewarding sounds. It’s an approach that has already won Sehore the Silver Medal at the 2025 Global Music Awards for for the song “Pesadilla.”
For example, while the environmental call of “Plastico” sounds like a distorted effect of a broken computer becoming sentient and teaching itself to write music, and I don’t mean that in a bad way, “Bla Bla Bla – Cha Cha Cha” heads into the cross-cultural world music meets modernity territory that “Talking Heads” loved so much.
Similarly, “Poquito a Poco” is smooth and seductive, with an enigmatic vocal over gorgeous cascades of guitar while “Escape Room” echoes the angular New Wave of the early eighties. Of course an album is bigger than just the person making the music, and so to that end the team at Paco Loco Studio where it was recorded and Mario G. Alberni at Kadifornia who mastered it, should also get a mention.
“Husfikbur” is one of those albums that is full of interesting, odd, and exciting songs, as well as passages and pieces through which the sounds of south-west Europe echo. And while I think that discerning music fans will find much to love here, I believe any guitarist, or musician in general, will find even more hidden depths, even more rewards, even more to love, and understand the nature of how challenging and adventurous, creative and corageous Sehore is.
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