From dance to digital rock, the debut LP from expat Eden Burns is exciting throughout
Eden Burns's new album And the Make Believers is both excitingly different and strangely familiar.
It’s an interesting proposition: an album by a well-known dance music producer that doesn’t really sound like dance music. In fact, he refers to it as “digital rock”, and without overstating the case, it may be something all his own.
Eden Burns has been producing music since he was 12. The Otago Daily Times profiled him in 2013, when he was 16 and had just moved from Christchurch to Mosgiel. He’d booked a show at the Glenroy Auditorium and was about to release his first EP.
Since then, he’s relocated to Melbourne and put out music on labels in the UK (Optimo, Feel My Bicep) and Germany (Public Possession). He’s hosted radio shows for NTS, Beats In Space (NYC), and over the last few years played shows throughout Asia and Europe.
Eden Burns has been producing music since he was 12.
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His DJ sets are hugely acclaimed, and as a producer, he found success with a series of EPs called Big Beat Manifesto, Vol 10 of which was released earlier this year. The series is eclectic, but broadly summarised as balearic tech house, explicitly aimed at the dance floor.
And the Make Believers is something else entirely. In an interview on 95bFM, Burns said he was wary of being pigeonholed and wanted to branch out stylistically. He named indie rock as an influence, and the melodies of The Cure, specifically the way they’re placed somewhere between happy and sad.
A few tracks - ‘Vocal Tune’ and ‘Slow Thing’ - fall under the tech house banner thanks to their insistent kick thump and hypnotic melodic structure, while ‘The Relaxed Man’ comes close but withholds the genre’s most important element.
That song’s lack of kick proves to be ingenious (you spend the whole time waiting for it to enter, then realise it doesn’t really matter), and throughout the album Burns takes several risks that pay off.
Three tracks don’t feature drums at all, with two of them - ‘Story So Far’ and ‘Bug Song’ - warm and nostalgic, and the other - ‘Burns Theme’ - featuring elements that drift in and out of tune to dramatic effect.
The rest can safely be grouped as the “digital rock music” their creator envisioned. Built around a more traditional kick/ snare rhythm, they’re always tastefully sparse, and while a few instruments like guitar and horns (or samples of them) dot the margins, this otherwise sounds like its own insular sound world.
The mix of sterile timbres with emotive melody pays off throughout, at times veering into vaporwave territory, at others the more muscular sound of bands like Soulwax and Teddybears.
‘Goodbye Jingle’ comes off like a thoroughly chirpy New Order offcut, while ‘Goblin’ and ‘C2P’ tend toward melancholy, but wind up somewhere comforting. They’re not dance tracks, strictly speaking, but you could easily dance to them.
It speaks to Burns’s songwriting skill that every song touches an emotional nerve, despite a lack of vocals beyond spoken samples and the odd disembodied, effects-processed vowel. His new direction is both excitingly different and strangely familiar.
More music to sample
Corner Coming Up by The Bats
Their lineup hasn’t changed since 1982, and The Bats sound like a band uniquely comfortable with one another. Robert Scott and Kaye Woodward’s voices are as complementary as ever, and there’s plenty of jangle throughout, a sound that’s far from wearing out its welcome.
Ranging from stately, string-laden numbers like ‘The Gown’ to the sprightly title track, the fuzz power-pop of ‘Loline’ to the ethereal ‘Eyes Down’, this would be impressive as a band’s first album, let alone its 11th.
Blue Irises in Hologram by Brandon De La Cruz
I’m guessing he’s tired of hearing it, but it’s uncanny how much this California-raised, Hamilton-based singer-songwriter sounds like M. Ward. That’s a flattering comparison, though, and the backing tracks behind De La Cruz’s soft, husky delivery are more exploratory than anything Ward has ever attempted.
Frequently heart-piercing - including the location-specific ‘Every Little Boy in Auckland’ - these are rich, rewarding songs, their hushed exterior slowly revealing a quiet ambition.
