Vargkvint

Sofia Nystrand is a Stockholm-based composer with a new album M​å​nens Hav, due out on June 2nd, 2023, via the German LEITER imprint. This follow-up to her 2019 record Hav, is deeply influenced by her childhood experiences growing up in the Swedish archipelago of Roslagen. With her music, she explores the duality of beauty and brutality in nature, “awe and fear, magic and sorcery,” and how it shapes our emotions and creative expressions. For this Headphone Commute Mix, Sofia compiles a selection of pieces that she listened to while composing her album. Here, we can find all of our favourites, from Grouper to Nils Frahm, from Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres to Tim Linghaus and his collaboration with Nystrand as Vargkvint. Sprinkle in a bit of This Mortal Coil, and you will get a sense of the influencing themes that permeated the music on her upcoming release, which in Swedish means “Oceans of the Moon”.

When working on the album, I tried to capture the space of these recordings, the beauty but also the sometimes scary and otherworldly, which I think all of these tracks have in common. Some of them are by artists I’ve never met, but have been an inspiration through their music. Some of them I have had the pleasure of getting to know throughout my musical journey that has inspired me both through their music and creativity as well as by their wonderful personalities. I hope you will love these pieces as much as I do, and that you might enjoy my new album.

— Sofia Nystrand