Photo Credit: Joel Ståhl
Releases “Nobody Dies”
Single + Video
Today, Badlands – also known as transboundary Swedish producer, composer and sound designer Catharina Jaunviksna – announced her fourth studio album Nobody Dies, set for release on October 10 via RITE. Inspired by a longing for human primitive musicality, the project embraces a raw sound using old string instruments and electronic scrap; thus exploring our need for authentic expression and synergy in a new fragmented world. The result is a collection of lo-fi ballads from the end of a world, emphasized by a sound that is textured, authentic, raw, and at some times, suggestive.
Alongside the release, Badlands has shared the album’s haunting title track + video, “Nobody Dies.” Premiered via Magnet Magazine, the ethereal single captures a brief, dreamlike encounter between two down-and-out souls. Set against a background of echoing strings and ghostly textures, the two are suspended in a moment of bliss as the world around them crumbles.
Catharina says, “‘Nobody Dies’ is the title track of the album. It was born from a fleeting encounter and the weight of a moment shared between two people on the edge. Their story lingered with me – fragments of their words, a certain silence between them – and I tried to capture that feeling. The rest is open.”
The accompanying music video is based on both the story behind the song, as well as Badlands’ art collaboration with collage artist and friend OSKARP (Oskar Persson), who has made the album’s original artwork, including the limited edition vinyl gatefold sleeve.
Badlands’ 2022 release, Call to Love, 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.
Now, on Badlands’ fourth studio album Nobody Dies, she introduces a metafictional journey, weaving together elements of rustic folk and post-apocalyptic ambience. Catharina Jaunviksna’s ever-evolving solo project this time invites guest musicians such as Maggie Björklund (Jack White, Mark Lanegan) on pedal steel guitar and folklorist Ida Mitchell on cello. With its distinct streaks of storytelling, along with a pronounced visual presentation, Nobody Dies is blurring the lines between reality and fiction, reflecting on music’s role in human identity amid modern challenges.
Catharina expands, “‘Nobody Dies’ is mainly about war, delusion and what it means to be human. It tells the story of a character in a broken apocalyptic landscape who is forced to invent and ascribe new meaning to things in order to endure existence and sow new hope.” She continues, “It’s a comment on the current state of the world and where we are heading, about deception, but also about making the best with what you got. It’s about the importance of art and human interaction, and the striving to find a way, even at times when everything seems hopeless (and even if that sometimes means delusion).”
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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