Best known as the voice of Octavian Winters, Ria Aursjoen has just released her debut EP, Strand, a collection of five beguiling soundscapes and mesmerizing songs. With a background seeped in Celtic and Nordic folk, progressive and symphonic metal, and darkwave music, this classically trained singer weaves elements of all of those influences and inspirations into a sumptuous cinematic experience.
“Nytår,” which opens the EP, sweeps us along, swooping and soaring, ebbing and flowing on sonic winds. The vocals are mixed in such a way that they are as much an instrument in their own right as they are traditional lyrical communication. The result is epic and all-consuming, the soundtrack to Icelandic sagas and ancient adventure, Ragnorak and Storm Giants doing battle in the sky.
Although this is her first solo outing, and some of the music, the title track in particular, was music created only recently, “Apollo” is a song seeing the light of day after ten years. Both vocally and musically, there is an echo of the much missed Sinead O’Connor’s own debut album, The Lion and the Cobra. And that is not a comparison I throw about lightly.
“Suns of Tomorrow” is more structured, the swirl of sonics tethered by the ticking beats, and “For Want Of” feels both a song of the here and now as much as it does primal and ancient, a song both earthly and yet otherworldly, the sound of long-vanished gods dreaming or the humming of the universe, rather than anything as mundane as a mere song.
Strand, which also means Beach in Danish, is a masterful calling card that, once heard, can only make the listener want more. And that can’t come quickly enough.
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