Sandman Project - Hearts Forever Sandman Project

Following the international praise for their 2024 debut album Where Did You Go?, Sandman Project return with Hearts Forever, the first album entirely composed, arranged and produced by guitarist, composer and bandleader Tal Sandman. Rooted in psychedelic groove, Middle Eastern musicality, funk, jazz and desert rock, it is a record driven above all by a wider spiritual belief in music as a force for connection.

If Where Did You Go? introduced Sandman Project as a borderless, brass-heavy outfit with a cinematic sound, Hearts Forever takes that vision somewhere more intimate and self-assured. Written following Tal's move from Jaffa to Leipzig, the album reflects a period of personal and creative transformation. Arriving in Germany without knowing whether she would find the right collaborators, she gradually assembled a new band through recommendations from fellow musicians, discovering a group capable of bringing her musical vision to life. For Tal, the music is not about drawing neat lines between styles or traditions. It is about taking inspiration from wherever it appears and reshaping it into something honest and alive. "If music touches my heart, it inspires me", she says. "So much music already exists, but what we are doing is creating something new out of inspiration. You take the ingredients and make a new thing".

That philosophy runs through Hearts Forever. The album travels effortlessly between Middle Eastern melody, desert rock, Ethiopian modes, Afrobeat, funk, soul, jazz and psychedelia, never treating influences as destinations but as starting points for something entirely its own. Instead, the songs emerge as emotional landscapes, each growing from a melodic idea. "A melody comes into my heart or mind and I try to dig deeper into it", Tal explains. "I give attention to the ideas that come". That growing confidence also shaped the making of the album itself. After years of doubting whether she was ready to take full creative control, Hearts Forever became the first Sandman Project record entirely composed, arranged and produced by Tal herself, with long-time collaborator Tomer Baruch returning as mixing engineer.

Opening track "Katara" neatly illustrates the writing process behind much of Hearts Forever. Built from a melody that arrived in Tal's mind, the piece grew into a hypnotic groove led by classical oud and Middle Eastern rhythm. As with much of the album, Tal recorded the original demo almost entirely herself, laying much of the arrangement and even singing the trumpet parts before bringing the music to the band, leaving space for the musicians to shape and expand the compositions together.

"Questions Answers" shifts the momentum up a gear, driven by Afrobeat-inspired drumming and an infectious call-and-response between Tal's desert-rock guitar lines and punchy brass responses. Layered vocals from Tal appear for the first time, while synth textures and a keyboard solo inspired by the atmosphere of an Arabic wedding celebration add to the track's celebratory feel, before it erupts into a loose surf-punk finale that has already become a live highlight.

Elsewhere, "So Said The Stone" reflects some of the restless energy of Jaffa through 70s funk, Afrobeat and Middle Eastern guitar lines, while "Abandawe" folds Moroccan guimbri-inspired guitar, Ethiopian melodic ideas and funky brass into one of the album's most intricate arrangements. "Kishuf" slows the pace, drifting through languid funk towards Tal's vision of a desert Woodstock, complete with Tal’s "magic flute", transformed through reverb and delay into one of the album's most distinctive voices.

At the centre of the record sits the title track, "Hearts Forever". More direct, soulful and emotionally open than much of Sandman Project's earlier material, it carries the album's central feeling: bittersweet, hopeful and innocent without being naïve. For Tal, the title speaks of memory, compassion and the possibility of connection across every divide. "The title offers hope”, she says. "It is about the hearts of people. I would love every person in the world to feel something".

That hope is never presented as an easy answer. Closing piece "Feelings Of Hope" was written as a response to the anger, division and violence Tal sees around her. Ending with the entire band singing together as a choir before Tal's searching one-take guitar solo, it becomes less a protest than a quiet act of belief. "Choosing hate is easy," Tal explains. "To go with hope takes more work”.

This is the quiet force behind Hearts Forever. Almost entirely instrumental, the album deliberately leaves space for listeners to find their own stories within it. Without lyrics, the music is never confined to one language, nationality or identity.

Following support for Where Did You Go? from All About Jazz, DJ Magazine, Bayern Radio, Greedy For Best, Pipelines Magazine, Ban Ban Ton Ton and Laurent Garnier, Hearts Forever finds Sandman Project entering a new chapter: more confident, broader in vision and more deeply rooted in Tal Sandman's own creative voice. Rich, restless and full of feeling, Hearts Forever is music for uncertain times; a record about holding on to innocence, choosing compassion and believing, however quietly, that connection is still possible.