Album Review: Edena Gardens, Dens
Posted in Reviews on December 20th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
When it was announced by El Paraiso Records earlier this Fall, it was suggested that Dens might be the final release from Danish instrumentalist trio Edena Gardens, who feature in their ranks drummer Jakob Skøtt and bassist/baritone guitarist Martin Rude and Nicklas Sørensen of Papir. The project is one of a slew in the orbit of Causa Sui and El Paraiso, which has become an ecosystem of sometimes-jazzy psych and heavy psych, with exploration as a core value uniting the works released under its banner no less than the themed layouts of the albums being issued.
That said, Edena Gardens has stood out both for quick turnarounds — their self-titled debut (review here) came out in Oct. 2022, and they followed with Agar (review here) earlier this year and still had room to put out the Live Momentum (review here) concert-capture LP, which if this is really it for them one will be glad to have for the documentation — and Dens brings seven pieces spread gracefully across 47 minutes brimming with mellow-psych meander. In Edena Gardens and in his own band, Sørensen has demonstrated again and again an ability to keep solid footing in a molten and shifting context, and whether it’s the brief drone-laced pastoral drift of “Vini’s Lament” (titled in honor of Vini Reilly of The Durutti Column) or the way “Morgensol” takes a conceptual cue from raga and sets itself not toward conveying the energy of the day but the slow-motion manner in which the sun hoists itself above the horizon.
If the first album was Eden — and it wasn’t at the time, but we’re all friends here, you and I, and we’re just talking, and maybe sometimes you want to make a revision so you can someday do a special 4LP box set or some such — and the second Agar, then Dens is the missing syllable to complete the band’s name spelled across their titles: EdenAgarDens. As the third in a maybe-trilogy, then, its shimmering resonance is leant that much more gravitas, but gravity doesn’t really apply here. “Morgensol” runs nine minutes long and is serene throughout, and while the organ and more active drumming in the crescendo of the 14-minute penultimate cut “Sienita” fuels a movement that is vibrant and energetic, Edena Gardens aren’t aiming for impact so much as ambience in terms of the general balance of what they do. Through opener “Wald” (‘forest,’ in Danish) and breeze that seems to blow “Dusted” along its light tumble, seeming to build some tension around three minutes in but resisting the impulse to break out volume-wise, the trio hypnotize in a way that feels multi-tiered, like they’re in it as much as the listener — the very epitome of ‘dug in’ — but if they ever actually get lost at any point, I can’t find where.
Causa Sui‘s Jonas Munk engineered the recording and Skøtt produced — careful hands, is what that tells you — and it’s pretty clear there’s been some level of editing done, which is to say there are fades in and out and pieces like “Vini’s Lament” or the slightly-fuzzier-in-its-leads “An Uaimh Bhinn” (referencing a cave in Scotland) that separates “Morgensol” and “Sienita” were likely carved out of larger improvisations, whereas “Sienita,” reportedly, is the front-to-back live jam with only the aforementioned organ overdubbed.
It’s academic, ultimately, to most who will take on Dens or any other of Edena Gardens‘ output past or right-timeline future, but not at all irrelevant to the vibe, which it doesn’t take long to figure out is high on the priority list here, generally speaking. “Sienita,” named for a type of volcanic rock, unfolds with casual wistfulness early, the drums at a slow march, but takes off gradually as it goes and builds to a first head before the halfway point and recedes again to let the second build start from the ground as it meanders into a payoff that feels like it’s maybe speaking to more than just this record but the cycle of three of which this is part.
And maybe, if Edena Gardens do manage to put a batch of jams/songs-carved-therefrom together after Dens it will inherently feel different just because of some imaginary border between what’s their third and fourth full-lengths. I don’t know and when you’re locked into “Sienita,” it hardly matters. It is a worthy moment for mindful hearing, not the least because it isn’t perfect and isn’t trying to convince anyone it is. It is simply that 14 minutes of playing, represented.
Which of course is nothing so simple. Involved in that, and one might argue emphasized here in terms of the position ahead of closer “Dawn Daydreams,” which is nine minutes shorter than “Sienita” and the second inclusion to reference sunrise behind “Morgensol,” is the chemistry shared between Rude and Skøtt and Sørensen and the organic nature of the jam itself. It’s heady stuff, and one must perhaps be willing to grant that jazz- and krautrock-informed light-touch psychedelic instrumentals might not be a universal appeal — rest assured, it’s the universe’s problem — but Edena Gardens in about the span of a year went from being nothing to having an identifiable sonic persona distinct from both Causa Sui and Papir, the two acts from whom its membership draws.
One such record was not a minor achievement. Two felt like a bonus. The live record, well shit, if they’re gonna be on stage, then yeah. And this? I don’t want to call it a victory lap, because it’s too classy to rub your face in its own achievement, but maybe a celebration of the core collab that makes it up, at least, or a potential project sendoff — and nobody’s saying ‘never again’ here to start with — as well as a completion to the arc that was set out by the band. At the very, very least, it is a collection of thoughtful, malleable and immersive tracks put together by artists whose joy for the process(es) of its making resonates as clearly as Sørensen‘s lead lines in the dappled shimmer of “Wald.” If it’s to be a culmination, then yes, it is.
Edena Gardens, “Dusted” official video
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