Today, Badlands — aka transboundary Swedish producer, composer and sound designer Catharina Jaunviksna — shared her new single, “The Sun,” alongside a spellbinding live, unplugged performance of the track. Stripping the vinyl-dusted meld of new wave, warehouse dub, and trip-hop heard on 2022’s Call To Love down to its more rustic, post-apocalyptic ambient folk foundation, the track is a meditative rumination on what it means to make someone else the center of your universe. “The Sun is about giving in to delusion in regards to another person, no matter if it’s in choosing a leader, infatuation or some other kind of paragon. When you idolize someone,” Jaunviksna says.
“The Sun” is the latest transmission from Badlands this year, following “Longernites” and “Let You Fall Asleep,” all three hinting at more Badlands music on the horizon.
Badlands’ previous album, Call to Love (2022), was an immensely personal body of work full of juxtapositions, at once both meditative and restless, dreamy yet carnal — oftentimes within the same song — the way that love tends to be. “It’s a tribute to love in all its wonderful, brutal, mean, horny and embarrassing forms,” she said upon its release. In 2023 a special remix version, Call to Love: Rendered, was released featuring remixes by Art Feyman, Odd Nosdam, Ikonika, Cooly G, PAL (Albin Johansson), Lost Under Heaven, Johanna Knutsson, and Jape.
Composer, producer & sound alchemist Catharina Jaunviksna has been operating under the moniker of Badlands since 2011, under which she makes lush tracks from a wide palette of inspiration; stretching from post-punk, folk and shoegaze, to electro, dub and gritty techno working with analog electronics, sampling & organic orchestration. She’s the founder of the imprint and production company RITE based in Malmö, Sweden; her platform for making transboundary arts and documentary, original music and sound design for film and theater, as well as production for and collaborations with other labels and artists. She’s received several national awards and nominations, including the STIM-scholarship and award for composer of the year by Manifestgalan & SKAP (2022).
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