Chris Wayfarer – Sverige EP

Sverige – just the mere word sounds mysterious and evokes phantastic images.
With his new EP Chris Wayfarer creates a musical travelogue: Four varied tracks portray four weeks the music producer has spent in different regions of Sweden on his parental leave. Impressions from a country where the familiar and the foreign seem to intertwine closely. Accordingly, Chris brings together not only different musical styles – being mainly deep house, electronica and downbeat – but combines also melancholy and tranquility with rough edges and, of course, solid club feel.

The journey starts on the rocky west coast of the Kattegat, in the south of Gothenburg. Chris is welcomed by rain showers and storm in Stråvalla. Deep chords and synths characterise the first track with its mystically subdued tones and a groovy essence at the same time. Decently used

Rhodes and harp sounds let sunbeams shine through on the particularly rough beauty of the fjords.

On the southern shore of the forest-fringed lake Vänern, tranquility permeates the atmosphere. In Årnäs, only birds every now and then interrupt a silence never experienced before. Chris has translated this mood into chords, pads and distorted bell sounds that provide depth to the framework of the pad-like bassline and the breakbeats.

In the east, images familiar from own travels or at least from tourism advertising: Red and yellow wooden houses perched on the rocks around Nävekvarn. Countless islands listening to the murmur of the Baltic Sea in the archipelago, and narrow, dusty tracks cutting through the seemingly endless forests. Edgy, bright sounds over a grumbling and sometimes resonant bassline reflect the rough nature of the scenery, accentuated by single pads and a flute-like synth.

The southern tip of Sweden presents itself again differently: The gently undulating landscape of Skåne invites the gaze to wander, all the way out to the endless sea. This soft and wide feel can be witnessed in the closing track on Chris Wayfarer’s EP. Like wafts of mist, Rhodes sounds and synths lie upon a descent downbeat. Strings and horns merge in, at first subtly, and in the second part of the track they proclaim the picturesque beauty of Sweden with literally orchestral solemnity.