Posted by Following two impeccable EPs EDEN finally unleashed his debut album in 2018, with ‘vertigo’ topping in the iTunes charts in a dozen countries.
A shy, introspective talent from Ireland, the producer – real name Jonathan Ng – seemed able to conjure phenomenally real, relentlessly intense landscapes with a nexus of ideas borrowed from hip-hop, R&B, and left-field electronics.
With the ‘vertigo’ era culminating in a sold out Brixton Academy show, EDEN’s solitary creativity pushes into a second chapter with ‘no future’, its thematics prompted both by the climate crisis and ongoing shifts in the producer’s own life.
It’s a broad, diverse, and ambitious return: ‘love, death, destraction’ is an intense guitar instrumental, while ‘in’ and ‘out’ are perfectly formed 30 second sketches. Opening track ‘good morning’ verges on the bucolic, but ‘hertz’ offers something rather more raw, almost lo-fi. EDEN conjures a gently nostalgia appeal on ‘isohel’, a track that peers into the past while never truly succumbing to it.
A rich album with a real sense of breadth, ‘no future’ finds EDEN harnessing new techniques while finessing his trademarks; ‘how to sleep’ slumps into somnambulist electronics, while ‘just saying’ leans on the Irish artist’s penchant for R&B.
The title may be ‘no future’ but EDEN has shown that he is more than capable of opening out a second chapter in his work.
8/10
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