Vargkvint - Månens Hav

A Closer Listen

We often realise the power of something’s influence only when we become aware of its absence. For Swedish multi-instrumentalist and singer Sofia Nystand, aka Vargkvint, that thing is the sea, to which she devoted her first album Hav. She grew up on an archipelago, surrounded by waves. Now, she writes, “when I’m not close, I feel a bit disoriented.”

The sea itself is subject to unseen powers. The water masses are dragged here and there by far distant objects, both the sun and more importantly the moon. And it is to the moon that Nystand has devoted her second album, Månens Hav. One of the many quirks of history is that areas of the moon are called “Seas” (“Hav” in Swedish) and it is for these that many of the tracks are named. Astronomers looked up into the skies and thought they saw oceans. In that sense, Månens Hav is a mirror, a reflection of Hav.

That’s true both thematically and musically. Fans of Nystand’s previous work will welcome a return to the delicate, mysterious, magical sound that she creates so well, but here the sound has been enrichened by the production of Antonio Pulli and access to the spaces and instruments of Nils Frahms’ LEITER studio in Berlin’s Funkhaus. The familiar felted piano, the delicate voice, the musical saw and the glockenspiel are back, as is her husband and frequent collaborator Jakob Lindhagen, but the whole thing is enhanced with subtly powerful sound design.

The album splits into thirds. The opening and closing trios of tracks are named for the seas and oceans of the moon while the central trio are named for some of its many goddesses—Selene, Artemis and Hecate—and here Nystand is at her most mystic. In “Artemis” her wordless vocals float over a piano arpeggio that descends continuously through keys, occasionally echoed by delay, as if a sprite is responding to the spell being cast. Nystand is also a stop-motion animator, and as the video for “Hecate” above shows, her skill at creating powerful, sedate symbolism is not just aural but visual. This is an album for dark nights, for quiet meditation, for staring into the night sky in wonder. Like the moon, its quietness belies its power. (Garreth Brooke)