Ancestral and modern. Organic and digital. Poetry and song. The artistic career of Sandra Monfort (Valencia, Spain, 1992) is forged on this cluster of dualities. She is a versatile artist, but also a very solid one. Someone who knows how to combine technique with intuition.

Her debut album, Niño Reptil Ángel (Hidden Track, 2021), which translates as Child Reptile Angel, was one of the most fascinating albums in Spanish pop music that year. A meeting point between poetry, traditional folk song and electronic beats, which showed that this Valencian artist can be found in the same orbit as all those musicians who are keen to update the sonic legacy of their territories from an absolutely contemporary perspective: she is in the same league as Maria Arnal i Marcel Bagés, Tarta Relena, Rodrigo Cuevas, Baiuca, Califato ¾ or Clara Peya. In fact, Monfort is one of the three pillars of the band Marala, along with the Balearic Clara Fiol and the Catalan Selma Bruna, band that was recognised at Catalan and Valencian awards such as Ovidi, Carles Santos and Enderrock for their albums Jota de morir (Propaganda pel fet!, 2022) and A trenc d’alba (U 98 Music, 2020). But what she is achieving under her own name is beyond compare. This was also recognised by the Valencian Carles Santos’ awards, in which her solo project was awarded with best emerging artist and best album of 2021. She has also given us two new singles in 2022, “Flordemavida” and “Estrany triangle amorós” (a tender, dark and melodic version of the well-known “Bizarre Love Triangle” by New Order), through which we can intuit the sonic evolution that is to come, as well as affirming the artist’s transforming capacity. This is why we can only look forward to new music from this unpredictable and magnetic creator, who presents her next album in 2023.

 Graduated at the ESMUC of Barcelona (same music school as Rosalia), specialised in classical guitar and occasional collaborator of  Mediterranean musicians and bands such as Efrén López, Ciudad Jara, Pep Gimeno Botifarra, La Raíz or Zoo, the Valencian artist produces songs that have very little of orthodox, reverent or corseted. Quite the opposite, in fact. Hers is a daring proposal, because technique without talent and imagination is not quite enough. A leap practically with no net, in which one can also locate points in common with the music of Sevdaliza, Oklou, FKA twigs, Oneohtrix Point Never, Björk or James Blake, international luminaries who are much closer to her than they may seem.

 Her songs share a rare and unique magnetism, a dreamlike quality that is nourished by ancestral folk, evocative poetry, digital stitches and the breath of nature. A tremendously Mediterranean music, remotely connected to the folk of its villages, but also unmistakably rooted in her environment, in that region of Alicante called La Marina Alta that has served her so much as inspiration. Sensitivity, delicacy and ingenuity at the service of one of the most unique and promising proposals in recent Spanish music.