Tomorrow's Yearning by Yesterday's Princess

The culmination of 10 years of extensive collaboration between producers Fredrik Bergsten and Marcus Larsson, Yesterday’s Princess came together as a vehicle for the duo to explore their desire to create an encompassing atmosphere—led by tone, production, and well-trained ears for the perfect loop. They share: “Growing up as hip-hop producers and both being schooled audio engineers, we value sound almost as greatly as the music itself. Tone is very important yet often forgotten—music is what you hear and tone is a huge part of that. Chops have no value if it touches no-one, and what touches you might be the tone of the instrument, rather than the note it played.”

Across the project’s four tracks, Fredrik and Marcus draw influence from the ground-breaking library music style pioneered by the KPM and Music de Wolfe music libraries, whilst also pulling in psychedelia, modal jazz and melancholic flavours from Swedish folk and prog music. Due to their foundations in hip-hop, the duo also opted to pull in hooky melodies and riffs to anchor the spaciness of the arrangements. Lead single Anemoia provides the perfect example, with haunting Fender Rhodes pads decorating melodic basslines and dynamic guitar lines: “Describing music is always tough, and we could maybe say that we just did the music we heard in our heads, but to break it down further you could see it as modal jazz-funk with a feel of a song ‘too good to sample’—a homage to our hip-hop upbringing.”

Most groups writing in this style tend to adopt a throwback approach to the production and mixing process; however, Fredrik and Marcus decided to steer away from this. Instead, they opted for a cleaner sound that takes full advantage of modern sound libraries and digital production techniques—“we wanted to make the mix big and full with a modern soundscape.” The original demos for the project were created around drum sample packs from A.J. Hall—also sampled by the likes of The Alchemist, Nas and Ari Lennox—who was then brought in to rework the breaks into full parts: “After that we re-recorded all instruments to fit the swing of the new drums and hired a bassist to replay some of our basslines.”

Fredrik Bergsten and Marcus Larsson met in 2010, striking up a relationship based on making music and digging for records to sample for hip-hop beats. Growing up with idols such as Pete Rock, J Dilla, Madlib and Beatminerz, they invested in the gear their heroes used, with SP-1200s and MPCs becoming a foundation of their creative practice. As their tastes grew, the limits of sample-based music became evident, so they began incorporating real instruments into their compositions, later on ditching the samples altogether. During COVID, they decided to join forces officially, rather than just making music side by side, leading to the birth of Yesterday’s Princess.

Swedish duo Yesterday’s Princess crafts soulful instrumentals rooted in jazz, hip-hop, and cinematic nostalgia. Their debut EP Tomorrow’s Yearning offers a rich sonic world where moody melodies, vintage textures and soulful grooves meet—music made to be felt as much as heard.

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