Yemken is a collaboration and the latest single between Cairo’s Pink Seasalt and Dirty Backseat (DB). The track reminds me of STRFKR in so many ways, I’m absolutely blown away. While Pink Seasalt specializes in indie rock, DB is the bedroom pop wizard producing tracks that convert indie pop and garage rock into his electronic interpretations (we’ll go more into DB on a later post). However, it would be very unfair to each artist to place simple labels on them. Their respective discographies shows each artist going through a wide range of genres and executing it perfectly.
Pink Seasalt currently has one album to his name, 2023’s reflective “Out of Luck“. The album is in English and features collaborations between musicians between Egypt and Europe. Hafez has settled back into Cairo full-time and is making waves in the local music scene. Hafez has released several singles since his LP release, about seven in total, with each track representing a different aspect or influence of Hafez’s Pink Seasalt project. There is a hazy and dreamy 2025 track 3ala Toul, or the two tracks Shereet Kharban and Matgily Tany which blend Western indie and Middle Eastern compositions together beautifully. I loved them all and trying to pick one to feature on this post was rather difficult (I defaulted to the most recent but how it got me moving like I do with STRFKR I felt it was a good choice).
As mentioned above, there is so much depth to Pink Seasalt’s music that it wouldn’t do the artist justice to slap a genre label to him. Hafez has been obsessed with music of all types and genres since a young age, going as far back as five when he discovered opera with his mother. There is an excellent interview with Hafez written a few years ago which can be found here that goes in deeper into his musical upbringing and his debut album. I’m hoping there is another record coming soon from Pink Seasalt. The musician is incredibly talented and can seemingly tap into any style of music he wants and not miss a beat.
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