Swedish pianist and composer Jacob Mühlrad will release music from his Tröstrapporter project as a series of EPs throughout 2020. Swedish for “comforting reports” the Tröstrapporter project consists of music composed as a soundtrack to a play of the same name.

Stream Jacob Mühlrad’s new EP Tröstrapporter

Tröstrapporter (the play) was written by popular Swedish author Alex Schulman. The play was scheduled to open at Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theatre in April 2020 but was postponed due to COVID-19.

Schulman’s story is inspired by sea weather reports broadcast on Swedish public radio. These reports have become unnecessary, as maritime workers now use their own apps and forecasting services.

Following the terrorist attacks in Paris, Swedish public radio ceased broadcasting the sea weather reports to make space for more urgent reporting. However, many listeners contacted the radio to complain about the change of programming. For those listeners the sea reports were not simply about the weather – they were a comforting ritual in an increasingly turbulent world.

Through Mühlrad’s compositions the listener is taken on a journey not only through the Scandinavian archipelago – its landscapes, fjords, and islands – but also through the psyche of the Scandinavian people.

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“I want this music to give comfort”, says Mühlrad. “Music for me is a way of meditating and I hope the listeners can enter a similar stillness.”

“To make the sea weather reports the embryo for Tröstrapporter felt incredibly natural to me, says Mühlrad, since I have been interested in and composed around rituals. The sea report is almost identical to a religious ceremony”.

Tröstrapporter (the music project by Jacob Mühlrad) will be released as a series of four EPs throughout 2020. The first volume is out now to stream.

Follow Jacob Mühlrad at jacobmuhlrad.se