Transboundary Swedish producer, composer and sound designer Catharina Jaunviksna, also known as Badlands, told us about her love for her American Conservatory-mandolin.
Badlands: Sometime in the 2010’s my brother found this battered old mandolin in a countryside flea market in the south of Sweden. Original case, and all. It turned out it was an American Conservatory-mandolin from around 1890, that had found its way over the Atlantic and later ended up in my studio in Malmö, since I collect and love to learn new musical instruments.
During the pandemic I got very bored of screens and hi-tech gear. I had just recorded two quite electronic albums (Djinn which was released in 2021, and then Call to Love, 2022) and to revitalize from screens, synths and drum machines, I started to play that same mandolin everyday, just to pass the time. Soon I could sense there was something very special with it. The sound was so different - the resonance was like ghosts echoing from inside its body. I started to write simple songs, rhymes and ballads on it.. and it was almost as if the tunes were writing themselves. When I had about 30-35 song sketches I started to screen out tracks, and realized that a new album was shaping up.
Nobody Dies wouldn’t have been if it wasn’t for that mandolin, and I still play it everyday, and I probably always will.
The Nobody Dies album is out now, vie RITE.
