Vargkvint - Månens hav (2023) [Hi-Res]

LEITER is proud to share a new album by Sweden’s Vargkvint, the solo project by multi-artist Sofia Nystrand. ‘Månens Hav’ is the follow-up to her 2019 record ‘Hav’, and it’s co-produced and engineered by Grammy Award-winning Antonio Pulli at LEITER’s studio in Berlin’s celebrated Funkhaus complex.

‘Månens Hav’, with its transparently related title, maintains the fascination that lay behind Nystrand’s debut, and it’s one that’s hardly surprising. Growing up in the Swedish archipelago of Roslagen, she lived close by the harbour where ferries arrive from Finland, and her bedroom window offered a clear view out over the ocean. ‘Hav’ took its name from the Swedish for ‘the sea’, and though she lives in Stockholm now, its power and mythology remain a constant companion. “When I’m not close,” she confesses, “I feel a bit disoriented.”

She’s quick to point out, nonetheless, “It wasn’t always about sun, blue skies and warmth. Winds can pull boats from the harbour out to sea, and fog can creep over the bay so you can’t see the other side.” On her second album, as on ‘Hav’, one can hear this tug – between beauty and brutality, awe and fear, magic and sorcery – in the gentle contrast of ‘Drömmarnas hav’’s delicate piano with the eerie sound of a musical saw, or the way ‘Stormarnas ocean’ accelerates, her crystal-like voice carried away by a swell of cellos and an undertow of mysterious static. It’s there, too, in ‘Stillhetens hav II’’s increasingly sombre mood and ‘Gränslandets hav’’s faintly ominous stillness, and indeed throughout this haunting album, which floats in a netherworld where ambient, folk, new classical, goth, new age, and even dreampop co-exist. Its title, however, betrays the fact that this time she’s journeyed far beyond her debut into otherworldly realms. ‘Månens Hav’, you see, means ‘Oceans of the Moon’.