Eden, formerly The Eden Project, is the production alias of Jonathan Ng from Dublin, Ireland. He was classically trained in music theory and violin in his youth and later proceeded to experiment producing harder electronic styles. In changing aliases he adopted a slightly more indie acoustic take on his previous sound and adopted a softer arguably more signature style. His first album officially released under EDEN, End Credits has an incredibly melodramatic sensibility, though is lacking a bit of intrigue in its tranquility. His most recent release, I Think You Think Too Much of Me, is a denser collection of tracks. Loaded with soul, the record covers most topics of existentialism and coping, and comes through as thoroughly heartbreaking. Over a combination of distorted synths and acoustic instrumentation, Jonathan croons painful tails of his human flaws, issues with love, desire to be remembered, and overwhelming melancholia. In rock + roll he details his dream to be like the mythical gods of music, the ones who transcended genres, spoke to all, and remain influential works long after their creation. The savvy guitar riffs thrown in the verses of the song are placed somewhat awkwardly, keeping the focus on his rolling vocals which keep the momentum of the piece. Where in most other tracks on the record use a combination of guitars, strong percussion, and dirty sounding warped saws, rock + roll keeps to a more traditional set of instruments, with the artificial instrumentation kept to a minimum. The track is almost crusty with a wistfulness,  paying homage to many of Eden’s influences, while the lyrics spell out his intentions fairly clearly. The composition is intricate  however, the track is broken into two halves, the first beginning with a soft guitar. As he builds intensity with his voice, the guitar breaks from acoustic to a much larger electric chord, and the track gains a great deal of momentum. The breaks down and repeats, but the second time backing his voice is a soft clean keyboard, tracing sets of 8th notes along behind him, exemplifying his different sets of musical influence, one on the traditional spectrum, and the other on a contemporary one. Both of these breaking into chorus with “I just want to sing like Sinatra” implies that the link between the two is in their quality, where fame can come from any place, it’s truly impressive people that make it come about. The delicacy of his words is frequently in their unexpectedness, where in lines like “I don’t give a fuck if you say you don’t fuck with me” he adds a rebellious flair while maintaining his fragility. As the song progresses to the second half he is joined by a choir and a conversation sample joins in the mesh. In the conversation of what sounds like two people talking, one about existential troubles, and the other attempting to quell them. The outro always leaves me with chills. Jonathan deserves a massive amount of respect for what he’s able to convey, especially given his age/experience; he’ll be turning 21 in a week and a day, which is absolutely absurd.

TL;DR Have an existential crisis to rock + roll, Eden is an impressive exploration in emotion. Jonathan deserves some of the adoration he asks for. Oh, and be sure to wish him a happy birthday.

-A

Two Door Cinema Club are infamous as the indie rock scene’s Energizer bunnies. Especially their debut album, Tourist History, the average tempo of which feels like it’s already been nightcored. The band admits that this was probably overkill and in interviews has said that part of their focus in prior years was to just keep playing faster and with more intensity, but eventually were burnt out from it and coupled with non-stop stress inducing touring needed to take a break. This is why their latest album, Gameshow, has a more disco influenced sound, with slower songs and more off the cuff rhythms, it’s a departure from the energy they were known for. Which admittedly was a slight let down upon the album’s reveal; I thoroughly appreciate artists advancing their style but TDCC’s older material did and does hold a special place in my heart for its blend of sophisticated sound and unadulterated speed and energy. Since then however I’ve come to love Gameshow, and appreciate what I admittedly at first couldn’t take seriously as Alex Trimble (TDCC’s vocalist)’s upper register. Lavender is likely my favorite track off the album, although there are quite a few gems. Lyrically I adore it because of its focus. I’ve always marveled at dreams, their surrealism, taking material and influences from its conscious counterpart and skewing them to absurd-ism. I think this alteration of reality is synonymous with the power of creativity: the ability to see a path to modify material from what it is to what it could be, and purpose to do so. Obviously in dreams the limitations of physics and energy conservation and general logic are lacking, making this phenomenon even more grandiose, but the bending of things known to those unknown remains the same. Trimble has said in interview that in the wake of the band’s separation he underwent a serious depression and drug addiction, which causes me to suspect that Lavender details his desire for escape from reality, in this case through sleep. Unconsciousness is a space where he can rest his head in a field of lavender, existing in a bent reality where gravity has no application, he declares he’ll be there for centuries. This study of escapism is intriguing, and in addition to the thematic interest, the piece has amazing musical power as well. The verses are sweet and self contained, but the pre-chorus feels particularly long, with an illusion that it could just keep building endlessly. This gives the narrative a slightly dreamy feeling and when the chorus finally does hit, the payoff is immense with a punch in the guitar and vocal combo that has no rival that I’m aware of. After the second verse it proceeds to somewhat milk the chorus, yet I have no complaints, I’m frankly still not satisfied by the end of it. Alongside Lavender, Good Morning is likely the other track that I’m overly attached to, however the album as a whole is most definitely worth a listen. I’d also recommend their older work but it’s difficult to have existed and not heard at least some of it so I’ll spare the noise.

TL;DR TDCC GMSHW RN!

-A

The name Montaigne ought sound familiar, it’s taken from the massively influential writer. It’s obvious that the artist Montaigne, the project of Jessica Cerro, a musician from Sydney, Australia, takes endless influence from her chosen namesake. In Life of Montaigne, she uses minimal production and a blend of punchy acoustic sounds to create a style that I think very closely mirrors the thoughts splays out. They’re a little bit noisy and disjunct by design, particularly in I’m a Fantastic Wreck the song plays up the lyricism with strange instrumental quirks out of rhythm and tune. She wrote Life of Montaigne only a year or two out of high school, possessing extremely coherent style and voice for such a young musician. More recently she released her debut album, Glorious Heights, which is a slight departure from her previous work. It has more weight to its production albeit with some callbacks to her earlier style such as Consolation Prize. Glorious Heights employs more experimentation as on In The Dark, and a generally broader use of electronic instrumentation. Some of the pieces, namely the album titled track, are distinctly reminiscent of Florence and the Machine, with the album as a whole setting its tone as quite grand in comparison with her previous EP and pieces like I Am Behind You that are simply beautiful pieces of music.

TL;DR Montaigne’s minimalism, experimental risk, thoughtfulness, and talent are something to appreciate.

-A

The trailer for our upcoming short film. The remix used in it was mixed in house, proud of that one. Give it a try.

-A