Farao, the enigmatic Norwegian artist Kari Jahnsen, unveiled her latest creation, ‘Waiting For You’. Known for a career that’s drawn whispers of praise from outlets like Pitchfork and The New York Times, and marked by a nomination for Best Composer at Norway’s Spellemannprisen, Farao thrives in the spaces where convention frays. Her ventures with the disco outfit Ultraflex and appearances at brooding stages like Roskilde and SXSW paint her as a restless innovator. With this single, she doesn’t so much demand attention as beckon it—quietly, insistently—into her world of sonic ambiguity.
Waiting For You unfurls like a late-night reverie, layering the hushed pulse of 90s R&B with the ghostly shimmer of 80s disco, then threading it through with the strange, delicate hum of zithers and ambient jazz undertones. It’s less a song than a mood—a haunting collage of textures that drifts between nostalgia and unease. The kick drum thuds like a distant heartbeat, the synths ripple like half-remembered dreams, and the bassline slinks through it all with a subdued, almost mournful funk. This isn’t music for the daylight; it’s a soundscape that lingers in the corners, pulling you deeper the longer you listen.
Reflecting on its genesis, Farao offers a glimpse into its shadowed soul: “I wrote ‘Waiting for You’ to dance with the shadow of someone I lost. The kick is my pacemaker, the synths are tears of joy in waveform, and a funky disco bass just makes life worth living.” Her words cast the track as a fragile bridge between absence and presence, a personal elegy woven into something larger, something elusive. It’s this tension—between the intimate and the unknowable—that defines the song, making it a quiet enigma that resists easy answers and rewards those willing to sit with its echoes.
Stream: ‘Waiting for you’
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