Edena Gardens – Agar LP El Paraiso Records (Denmark)

LP version. On their second album, Edena Gardens manifests itself as a permanent fixture in the El Paraiso catalog. Edena Gardens could have flickered and disappeared in true El Paraiso fashion with a single session album, but the trio emerges with both a new studio album as well as a live album (Live Momentum, EPR 071LP). It’s part of the band’s DNA: it contains multitudes. There’s always a variation or open path, shifting with ease from heady cosmic stoner folk-vibes, to the scorched earth of 12-minute centerpiece, “Veil”. “Halcyon Days” opens up a panoramic interlude of beautiful analog warmth, while closer “Crescent Helix” opens in full free-jazz mode, only to travel into an endless crescendo of alt rock proportions rarely found on this side of the ’90s. Somehow, Edena Gardens combines the sum of its multifaceted parts in a unified way, perhaps due to Causa Sui drummer Jakob Skøtt‘s transparent edits and layered treatments. Or perhaps the trio’s level of experience and joy of playing simply connects whatever direction they pursue — Nicklas Sørensen of Papir‘s glistering guitar lines, backed up by Martin Rude‘s rumbling baritone guitar strums or solid basslines. It’s an album that showcases not only the spontaneous paths taken, but also the vast well of ideas or sounds only implied or briefly touched upon, creating an aggregation of sounds just out of reach. Welcome back to Edena Gardens.