GLOBAL VMEN: Eden

Ahead of his new album, EDEN talks about his creative process, growing up in Ireland, and his love for “Sandstorm.”

This feature appears in VMAN 49 now available for purchase

Each musician has a special story about the first time they fell in love with music. For Jonathon Ng that initial spark came in the form of a Now That’s What I Call No. 1 Hits CD. The then 6-year-old was especially pulled toward the pulsating, techno beats of “Sandstorm”–so much so, that every time he played the disc he would skip all the songs until he found Darude’s song and hit replay. All that persistent replaying made an indelible mark on the artist’s musical sensibilities because, as fate would have it, he never turned back. Today, the artist who now goes by EDEN, continues experimenting with various synths, melodies, and beats to recreate the same serotonin release “Sandstorm” initially had on his brain. “I don’t really remember a time where music wasn’t something that I wanted to do,” he shares with VMAN.

Eden wears shirt Our Legacy, pants Norse Projects, shoes adidas

Hailing from the busy metropolis of Dublin, Ireland, EDEN spent most of his adolescence experimenting on GarageBand, the pre-installed music maker on Apple devices. On his family’s MacBook computer, he would start creating tracks with his older brother. When he grew into his early teens, he started releasing his tracks anonymously via the moniker The EDEN Project on SoundCloud. His early Skrillex-inspired beats resonated with the generation, and before you knew it, his songs were racking up tens of millions of streams on SoundCloud. And while EDEN grew up in Ireland, he considers himself more of “a product of the Internet.” Absorbing different artists he would stumble across on digital platforms, he built his sound. And because of this broad sonic influence, the 26-year-old’s music is often hard to define.

Eden wears all clothing A Kind of Guise

This September, the artist returns with his third album, In Case You Missed It, which not only pushes the boundaries of sound but also his own vulnerability. Created during lockdown, the eleven songs are the most introspective look at the artist to date, documenting his bouts with love and heartbreak. It was so intense that there were times during the creation that the musician broke down: “I was playing the chords over and over again [in ‘Call Me Back’] and the melody for the song came and I started bawling my eyes out. I’ve never been in tears over music in that way. It felt like a new horizon.” And with his new body of work, he not only steps into his own future, but also ushers a new generation of musicians pushing the boundaries of sound, toward an exciting, genre-agnostic future.

This feature appears in VMAN 49 now available for purchase

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