Vargkvint
Biography Vargkvint
Sofia Nystrand
Since her spellbinding DIY debut EP Brus in 2017, the multi-talented artist Sofia Nystrand has enchanted listeners with the music of Vargkvint, a solo music project which draws inspiration from the oceans, forests and folklore of her native Sweden. 2019 saw the release of the concept album Hav, a record steeped in the folklore, language, and mysterious allure of the sea. The magic continued with Hav Reimagined, a stunning collection of reworks by some of her favorite fellow artists. It was not just listeners who fell under the spell cast by Vargkvint’s sound. Nystrand was hand-picked by German label LEITER, founded by none other than Nils Frahm, to be a part of their Piano Day Vol. 1 compilation leading to the release of a new full-length album due out next month called Månens hav (Oceans of the Moon).
The artist-name Vargkvint is very much a play on words that I found in a book of music theory. In one of the older systems for tuning instruments by Phytagoras you would get perfectly clean fifths (as in the interval between two notes), except for in one place in the instrument where you would get the ”Vargkvint”, aka the Wolf’s fifth (a fifth that would sound as bad as when a wolf is howling). I thought it suiting as an artist name, and I love the story behind it. For me it represents that there is beauty in imperfection. The music project actually grew from that name.
In 2016 I self-released my first EP Brus which Stationary Travels wrote a very kind review about. Through this release, and from it being mentioned in the blog I got in contact with a lot of friends that has helped me forward in my musical journey. In 2019 I released my debut album Hav through Piano and Coffee Records, and sometime later an album of reworks from amongst others Lucy Claire and Tim Linghaus. And now I’m releasing my follow-up album!
