Full Album Premiere & Review: Edena Gardens, Edena Gardens
[Click play above to stream the self-titled debut from Edena Gardens. Album is out Oct. 28 via El Paraiso Records with preorders here.]
The meeting of vibes taking place throughout Edena Gardens‘ self-titled debut is not entirely unexpected, and it’s in keeping with the Causa Sui/El Paraiso Records psych-as-jazz-and-also-sometimes-psych-jazz ethos that, like collaborating soloists, Martin Rude and Jakob Skøtt of the venerable Danish explorers should unite with guitarist Nicklas Sørensen of established countrymen post-jammers Papir for an album that harnesses strengths from all of them. With Skøtt on drums and Rude swapping between bass and guitar, and Sørensen stepping into a kind of featured role, Edena Gardens offer mellow-psych immersion throughout the entirely-instrumental 44 minutes of their self-titled debut — on El Paraiso, naturally — echoing through synth-laced cosmic pastoralia on “Now Here Nowhere” and, crucially, seeming to find its way as it goes, with cymbal wash and guitars waking at the outset of 10-minute opener and longest track (immediate points) “Aether,” which marks out the fluidity with which the proceedings will play out.
Rude, on guitar or bass, is the unifying factor in bringing together Sørensen‘s guitar and Skøtt‘s guitar, and while it’s a jazz-born ethic, one might also recognize it from a near-infinite number of rock power trios, including to some extent Papir, so the argument might be made for some carryover on Sørensen‘s part there, but the thunder-rumble under “Aether” as it comes gradually to life is the rhythmic center around which the song takes shape, a light lumber with a correspondingly light warning of the tonal heft that may or may not follow.
It does, at least a little, but it doesn’t really have to. And that’s not a complaint in the slightest. These seven songs find Edena Gardens willfully embracing the tenets of heavy psychedelia, whether it’s the gathering-consciousness-for-exhale taking place in “Aether” or the immediately more active “Sliding Under” picking up from that extended leadoff with what sounds like Yawning Man-style pedal steel or slide; dreams cast in intertwining lines of guitar, hear-every-string strums and a soft, ethereal, jammy roll.
The song might be titled after its ending fadeout, in which indeed the guitar and drums slide under a line of synth to finish and give way to “The Canopy,” which follows the guitar’s deceptively plotted course — that is to say, just because the listener doesn’t yet know where Sørensen is headed doesn’t mean he doesn’t know either — sweet detailing of synth/effects and quiet drums behind, maybe some chime percussion? It’s hard to know what’s real and what’s imaginary after a while, but the drift factor in “The Canopy” is a righteousness unto itself, finishing with a brief moment of drone that is like a reveal for what’s been filling the song out all the while.
So much flow. And whether or not you can go with it is going to determine basically the entirety of the impression Edena Gardens is making, but it’s hardly an effort to follow Rude, Skøtt and Sørensen through these pieces that make up the whole of the album. “The Canopy” wraps side A with the exact opposite of a feeling of ceremony, as if just to quietly note the passing of time, the fleeting nature of even the universe itself, let alone anything to temporary as art, music, humanity, and so on. One of just two songs under four minutes long — the other is the penultimate “Iod” — it leads to the centerpiece/side B opener “Hidebound,” which pushes the synth forward in cyclical washes alongside a steady progression of guitar and drums, the spirit more cool-river than molten-ooze, with a rise in volume serving as a perfunctory crescendo as that synth line runs by again for the comedown.
This they follow with the aforementioned “Now Here Nowhere,” putting Skøtt‘s drums along with the synth and Rude‘s bass out there on the quick with Sørensen joining a moment later, a perfectly executed, smoothly realized methodological swap that puts the listener in a different place almost without realizing it. All they had to do was change up who starts playing and where the drums are in the mix, and it works to give a different vibe, more like some lost Hendrix studio track, readily meandering blues licks and tripped-out effects for aural detailing coinciding with a progression that, I’m not sure it’s right to call it straightforward, but perhaps on a relative level.
“Now Here Nowhere” pays off the light warning of “Aether” in its apex, and prefaces the rock aspects in the finale to come, with the droner “Iod” ensuring breath and breadth alike, the ambience so much a factor in what Edena Gardens have been able to conjure in this material. Even in what’s essentially an interlude on a completely instrumental record, the band manage to offer headphone-worthy depth and mood, and though it’s over quick, the open spirit plays well into “An T-Eilean Dubh” (say “anti-alien dub,” which I guess/hope means they’re worried about invaders from outer space), with a far-away-at-first rush on the drums and a central figure of guitar that feels specifically like homage to Colour Haze in its movement.
That also, not a complaint. With Rude‘s bass underscoring the tom work from Skøtt and Sørensen‘s solidified but still laid back lead lines, the volume swells subtly as the closer moves through its 6:51, seeming to come to a head near its halfway point but saving its standout moment for the improvised-sounding dawn-of-enlightenment solo that rounds out before the entirety comes apart and the record ends in duly understated fashion.
I will not pretend to know what will become of Edena Gardens, if it will be an ongoing collab between Sørensen, Skøtt and Rude or if it’s a one-off happening, but it’s hard to listen to the songs on Edena Gardens and not appreciate the fact that somebody in the studio that day hit ‘record.’ The tracks have obviously been edited with the fadeouts and so on, but they’d have to be to accommodate format, the mix becomes part of the art, and accordingly, the album feels like glimpses of and short visits to another world, where at least today it’s sunny and warm if not all the time.
The potential for expansion on what they do here is likewise planetary in scale, but the sweetness of Edena Gardens is something essential and organic that arises from the music, and toward whatever reaches they might ultimately adventure (or not), there will only ever be one first time out. This is it, and they make the most of the occasion.
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Tags: Causa Sui, Denmark, Edena Gardens, Edena Gardens Self-titled, El Paraiso Records, self-titled
