Album Spotlight | Rozzma - ‘Khamsa Haqeeqa’
After a five-year hiatus, Egyptian experimentalist Hussein Sherbiny has returned from the shadows as his Rozzma persona with a new album and a new outlook.
In the forever unpredictable landscape of Cairo’s underground, few artists loomed as enigmatically as Rozzma when he appeared seemingly out of nowhere in 2017. Known for donning the gilded mask of Tutankhamun, his ‘rave bass’ sounds sat at an eccentric, experimental intersection between electro and shaabi.
He arrived as an anomaly of music and cultural expression, a bridge between Egypt’s storied ancient weight and a frenetic, neon-drenched future.
After a five-year hiatus that left fans and critics wondering if the mask had been retired for good, he has returned with ‘Khamsa Haqeeqa’ (Five Truths) - an album that doesn’t simply pickup where 2020 release ‘Khatar Sayeb’ left off, but one that breaks down Rozzma circa 2017-2020, and uses the raw materials of that persona to build something far more complex and emotionally resonant.
Rozzma’s absence, as it turns out, wasn’t a retreat - it was a metamorphosis that saw him shed his mask to reveal himself as none other than Hussein Sherbiny - the avant garde music-maker who first rose to fame as part of electro trio, Wetrobots.
Released via the seminal 100Copies Music, ‘Khamsa Haqeeq’a is an album of fascinating contradictions. It is heavy yet melodic, ancient yet synthesised, and deeply personal, infused with a depth and cinematic tension that grounds his experimental energy in a newly acquired wisdom and and vulnerability, with the five truths that the title refers to hitting like a manifesto from an artist man grappling with a new reality based on introspection and extrospection alike.
