RONJA
A cold, sweeping expanse where ancient linguistic weight collides with fractured electronic synthesis. Ronja operates in the liminal space between academic preservation and dancefloor possession.
Her compositions sweep though feral electronic folk, gothic lit and epic poems delivering a harsh, beautiful landscape of experimental northern static, from somewhere else entirely.
Ronja | Spiritual Whsipers from the Scandi Forests
“I don’t think anything’s really ‘ancient’. It’s just ‘the present’ as it was seen. It’s the same Nordic poetry’s DNA I write in as my forebears did a thousand years ago”
Transmit 4. R
“I got in touch with The Tape’s literary imprint, The Datura Press, as they were doing some very cool things in that very weird gothic literature space” explains Ronja.
“Lot’s of lore, witches, forests full of wolves, biting cold blizzards, you know, all the fun stuff I love” she laughs. “And we we’re looking to do some epic poetry readings from works from my country Sweden, I started giving them pointers on sounds too and they…well, they just freaked out really.”
“So Datura at The Press put us together to do some audio work for them” says Dom from The Tapes’ in-house production darkStylus. “like she’s a genuine PHD Doctor of this folklore stuff, so it was pretty amazing to listen to hear ex[plain all the history, and we get talking about the instruments of the time and how we could bring them into a modern setting, then she says ‘well if you’re interested, I have been doing my own kinda thing around that.”
“I’ve got some friends who are amazing tradition musicans and they play all the traditional instruments too, hurdy-gurdys, Nyckelharpa, Säckpipa you name it. So I’d made some field recordings of them when we were all drunk one night out in the woods, then filtered and processed them through my laptop’s music set up. I just thought these fragments would be interesting and helpful”
“But, I thought they hated them when I played them” she laughs. “They and Mujiki, Datura and Dom just started laughing when I hit stop.”
“Turns out they were laughing because that was exactly the sort of sound they thought would be perfect, they just couldn’t hear it themselves, they needed a native Nordic to make the leap.
“So they locked me in a studio to make all these drones and melodies, then from my own poetry, we got lyrics and from lyrics we got songs. I hope my descendants will dig them up in another thousand years from now.”
/ say my name again and it's done / say my name again and it's done
/ say my name again and it's done / say my name again and it's done
I am the Witch in the Wire
#DarkArc 005
Something lurks in the forest, old, ancient and longing for love — and down the modern wires you can let her in.
“From my wire, I shall make us one / I am your Witch, that turns two to one”.
All you need to do is to say here name three times.
Shadowy beats, a pale-choir of ghostly voices, Ronja’s siren call floats across a frozen forest — as terrifying as it is seductive.
Those three times, let us start with one
Again makes two, that leaves us one
Say my name again, and it’s done
Say my name again, it’s done
No Cover No
Released soon
Ronja spins the classic tale of the murdered lover’s return for revenge.
“My once lover, you’ll discover / My revenge, is like no other” is enough to send chills down any neck, from her frozen grave she is back to haunt and hunt her betrayer, promising torment and merciless murder.
An eerie and gothic tale given full flight in choir and orchestra
“No no no, no lover no / For you, there is no cover no”
Yet here I am back, from the lake so cold
I never shiver now, nor grow old
Where you sunk me, all canvas wrapped
From that black I come floating back
As ever, brilliant work from FugaceFugace for Ronja’s ‘Häxa’ jacket, photoshoot, artwork and illustration
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