Review: Oestergaards - Mistersva

Artist: Oestergaards

Album: Mistersva

Label: Fluttering Dragon

Release date: August 2025

Drive for approximately three hours north of Stockholm and you'll end up at Lake Långrösten. A relatively unimportant glacial lake, merely 6 square kilometres in surface, with a depth not exceeding 12 metres, it hardly registers on the list of Swedish lakes, almost 100.000 in number. And yet, its situation, its history, its peculiarities and the fact that it's surrounded by Nordic forest on more than 70% of its shoreline served as inspiration enough for Oestergaards sophomore album, Mistersva, a sonic exploration of history, mysteries and tales several times older than anyone who happens to read these lines.

Just like its professed love for ancient lore, Mistersva is a hearkening back to the roots of Scandinavian dark ambient as much as to the history of the lake it attempts to portray. Deep drones, melodic sequences and dreamlike soundscapes all combine to create a proper tribute to the sound that placed Scandinavia on the dark ambient map in the early 2000s. In fact, I haven't heard anything resembling that period as closely in years, underlining the fact that Tomas Östergårds, the artist behind the (almost eponymous, bar the old-style spelling) project comes from a rich tradition despite releasing only his second full-length album in almost a decade. His manipulation of drones, eerie melodies and field recordings is nothing short of masterful, which makes the album feel much longer than its 45-minute running time, in the most positive of senses. Just as intended, there is a strong sense of place on Mistersva, although the time is less easy to pinpoint; the album's glacial progression and epic crescendos impart the feeling of a storyline spanning centuries rather than years. And yet, for all the immobility of a glacial lake, there's an undeniable human imprint weaved into the sound, making it feel like a tale more than a documentary. Every coastline and every section, which the tracks have been named after, seems to contain a story of its own, whether of roaming ghosts, vengeful humans or mysterious events, all told beautifully through an excellent use of dynamics that the artist makes particularly good use of, despite the relatively short length of individual tracks. In a rarely successful turn, the album closes with the Kammarheit remix of the third track, imbued with the magic only the artist in question can conjure, and leading the album to a triumphant close.

I've seen Oestergaard described as resembling both seminal Lustmord works and the golden age of Cold Meat industry releases; I dare say that Mistersva reminds me of the early days of Cyclic Law more than anything else. Comparisons and nostalgia aside, though, this album is an impressive piece of quintessentially Scandinavian dark ambient, the likes of which haven't been heard in a while, and which shows that the Swedish dark ambient scene is far from dormant - merely operating at a larger timescale than mere humans can perceive.

Rating: 8/10