Mormor

Canadian singer and multi-instrumentalist MorMor surfaced abruptly in 2018 when the enigmatic, ethereal single “Heaven’s Only Wishful” appeared. Across a run of self-produced pieces, he fused the exposed vulnerability of the singer/songwriter tradition with the hazy detachment of indie rock and the hallucinatory inflections of R&B. Fresh tracks continued to surface over subsequent months, eventually coalescing into the 2019 EP Some Place Else. After further singles, MorMor issued his first full-length album, Semblance, in 2022.

Toronto musician Seth Nyquist had nurtured an early fascination with adventurous pop forms, absorbing the work of Burial, James Blake, and Radiohead while still a teenager. Following several years of collaborative band projects with friends, he adopted the MorMor alias for solo endeavors in the late 2010s. His debut track, “Heaven’s Only Wishful,” circulated through industry channels via his Toronto associate Daniel Caesar, a fellow experimenter in R&B. The somber recording merged restrained indie melancholy with soaring R&B falsettos that escalated into anguished cries; upon its official 2018 release, the song surprised audiences and quickly gained traction. MorMor then issued “Whatever Comes to Mind” and “Waiting on the Warmth,” which, together with two additional cuts, formed the five-track EP also titled Heaven’s Only Wishful. In 2019 he repeated the pattern, unveiling several new pieces that were later combined with unreleased material to create the atmospheric Some Place Else EP. Apart from the 2020 release “Don’t Cry,” his activity diminished while he focused on completing a debut album. The 2022 tracks “Seasons Change” and “Chasing Ghosts” introduced that project, Semblance, which arrived that November.