Find A Song that is a summary of life’s highs and lows
rauður - We Will All Feel Better One Day And/Or Die
Semilunar by rauður is a projection of a mind that is (only) half crazy. It is also the shape of the moon in a broken heart. It is the inside out.
All of the songs are written, recorded and produced by rauður in the last year or two, emerging from random creative outbursts, that somehow became a whole. The music fluctuates between turbulence and reassurance, and can sometimes be agitating and soothing at the same time. If that is even possible.
“I wanted to create harmony within contradiction. Calm in the chaos, confusion in the comfortable. Make things fit together that actually don’t seem to, and maybe get some peace of mind. But all of this I am saying afterwards. I had no plan. It is just a snapshot of me developing my synthesizer- and music software skills. Experimenting and stretching boundaries, both technical and physical. And now I have an album.”
rauður is the stage name of Icelandic musician and producer Auður Viðarsdóttir. Formerly a keyboardist and singer of Nóra, a band active in Iceland’s music scene a few years back, she has now emerged as a solo artist. Since plugging in her first synthesizer as a teenager in an old garage in her hometown Reykjavík (a Roland SH-201 to be specific), she has slowly but surely developed her sound, merging electronic and acoustic elements into an ethereal soundscape. Perhaps in harmony with the sound of her own name, which is almost intangible for people who don’t speak Icelandic.
Her voice weaves together with eccentric beats and captivating melodies that take us through highs and lows, while her accompanying lyrics tend to reverberate with different types of disasters - sometimes pretty, sometimes crude - always fascinating.
“We Will All Feel Better One Day And/Or Die” is the final track on the album. It serves as a climax to the album’s bleakly optimistic atmosphere. A sentimental, yet matter-of-fact, summary of life’s highs and lows. Bad things happen and good things happen and we still live, but then we die.
“The beginning is the most indie-acoustic part of the album, but then I combined it with a peculiar dancy beat and a synth orchestra, with a choir of family and friends as the cherry on top. Since the song is actually about them, my loved ones, and me. Us.” (press release)
