SEHZ unveils his first EP, Nights, venturing through feelings of nostalgia and bringing them to life through flashes of melodic moods.
SEHZ is a Spanish Sydney-based producer and guitarist who dives into music and crafts soundtracks for moments through his incredible engagement in soundscapes. SEHZ has just released his first EP Nights and through his four tracks, he travels through different themes and genres that revolve around feelings of nostalgia.
The EP starts with the title track, Nights, which SEHZ wrote back in 2017. Originating as a guitar-based rock jam that morphed and changed throughout the years, SEHZ shared with us the frustration he experienced whilst trying to construct the tune in a way that emulated his vision: “No matter what we tried it never felt right,” he explained. However, thereafter, SEHZ came full circle and realized that the way it originally was written, in its purest form, was how it was meant to be, and he took on the lead vocals.
Crafted with echoes of electrifying guitar reverb and dripping crystalized synth, the soundscape belongs to the feelings of regret that wake you up in the middle of the night. Those feelings about what should have been said, or done, at a certain point in time. The soulful guitar weeps through these puzzling and weighing thoughts as a shift between the vocal tones cries out to each other. A cathartic, erupting guitar solo plays out the rest of the song, as the vocals drown in a spine-tingling and feverish, yet eloquent and smooth, atmosphere.
The next track, Love + Other Things explores SEHZ’s weakness for II, V, I chord progressions. He utilizes these progressions to create glimmering and saddening sounds, as though each note has its own moment of pure emotional rawness. The gorgeous and delicate vocals of singer Carla, hit a nerve as she twists and swings through the dazzling teary synth, framing a polished smooth space. These glimmering sounds pan in and out, creating space and time within the feelings that are being felt and expressed. A bending seductive guitar solo with a mixed-in giggle of the sweet-sounding soprano vocalist, gestures to a surreal and whimsy feeling from another time. It creates this feeling of a moment, a dream that is out of reach. SEHZ navigates his way through tension and release and expresses their existence within feelings and spaces in this track, as he ends it with a sense of resolution.
Nobody Like You is a pocket-sized euphoric orchestral soundscape, driven by SEHZ’s love for songs that take him somewhere different. The track begins with the feeling of a new day, a space where you feel alive and awake, with birds chirping in the background. The tender vocals cascade within a more R&B and hip hop vibe. The chorus embraces stubborn yet heart-rendering strings, as ghosts of the past hover above, visibly but calmly. A warm medley of vocals harmonise and synchronise in a state of nostalgia. A sense of romance brings the song to an end as SEHZ samples in scattered sounds of children chattering and laughing alongside glimmering chimes. It feels like a lullaby that is released from the shackles of the past and is replaced with hip hop grit that revels in a space of reminiscing.
SEHZ crafted We Are Always Late as a musical composition that would encapsulate all the themes he had ventured through on the previous tracks. The sound opens its space up through pitters and patters of rain-like samples and an ocean-like atmosphere. Shadows of the melodic piano tiptoe and jolt through the hazy vocals. SEHZ highlights the importance of using music as a tool to express things that have been unsaid, to arrive at a state of closure. Distorted shredding of the guitar rips through this absent feeling of closure and hypnotically teleports him into clarity.
Untethered by the past and able to sit in nostalgia with a sense of hope and a smile, SEHZ’s new EP, Nights, is an emotional yet cathartic journey into making sense of things that have been said and done, as well as those that haven’t .
Stream Nights via Spotify below, and reminisce along with all of us.
