They Love Eden Grey. Who? Well just about anyone who's heard her tunes, enjoys her art, or follows her fascinating forays into the world of modular synths. Here comes another massive point in her favour, the stellar five-track EP 'Vortices'. Every track does a delightful job of extolling the virtues of Grey as a fantastic music-maker without uttering a single word. Well, except her own name. It's a cool name, and this is a cool EP. Get on this.

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INTERVIEW
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George Ernst (Triplicate Records) I would be remiss in my 'duty' as an interviewer if I didn't inquire about the inspiration for 'They Love Eden Grey'. That's one of the maddest tracks I've heard all year, I loved it.

Dr. Chelsea Bruno (Eden Grey) I took a group of four students out of a class I was teaching this year to show them a track I was making with the Moog Grandmother, how I recorded the synthesizer and was arranging it in the track. They suggested I put a tag of my name, so then I recorded each one of them saying my artist alias. I then had a lot of fun warping their voices and glitching them up over the track.

GE: Assuming it's changed at all since last time (I don't have the best ear for these things) can you tell us a little about the equipment being utilized on this EP?

CB: Along with my usual modular synth implementation in Ableton, I used the Moog Grandmother on all the tracks except for Trenches, which I played Arturia V Collection 9 soft synth plugin with my M-Audio keyboard.

GE: Cats: Cute or Crap?

CB: I guess you might be asking me this since a lot of synthesizer people post pictures of themselves with their cats. I have never been a cat owner my entire life. However I do think they are cute. My son has a stuffed Pusheen cat, which was the only thing he asked Santa Clause for at Christmas time, so I think that is the cutest thing ever. He is really allergic to cats though.

GE:  Can you tell us about the inspiration behind the title 'Vortices'?

CB: One time I made a friend named Judy who told me about how she visited a vortex in Sedona Arizona. She gave me a couple rocks from there which I was convinced were magical rocks and I cherished them for years. These tracks have a very energetic vibe about them. The title of the album is a reminder to myself to visit vortices.

GE:  What was the last DVD you acquired?

CB: I only have one DVD in my whole house, which is Warp records music videos directed by Chris Cunningham.

GE:  'Trenches' caught me off-guard.  Can you elaborate on the decision to place such a vastly different style of track on this EP?

CB: I like to create ambient music sometimes, so that is why I included the track. It was a spontaneous decision, I just like to include different styles on my albums.


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REVIEW
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Triplicate Records proudly present: A new release by one of our favourite artists and yours, Eden Grey, bringing the beat back with a sleek and rewarding five-track extended play 'Vortices'. The project overflows with sweet, smart musical moments designed to delight thoroughly.

Opener 'And Ever' does what any first track ought to do: remind the listener why the artist is worth listening to, and in turn, drag new listeners into the light. It's a dance-worthy number, heavy on the beat and bang-on with picking its moments to deploy the fun factor. It's cool and collected, knowing when to lay the percussive foundations of the piece and when to indulge sparingly in delicious musical shimmers.

'Grey Rain & Silver Clouds' on the other hand shimmers unreservedly, often against an icy synthetic edge, contrasting dark bends with bottle-bell patterns. That's not to say it sits still much. Despite its relative short-length, the track has a feel of constant evolution to the warping bell arpeggios that conveys the barely concealed intentions of an adventurous producer.

'They Love Eden Grey' is the stunning centrepiece of the EP. Spooky dead-voiced chants of 'EDEN, EDEN, EDEN, E-E-E-EDEN GRE-GRE-GRE-GRRRR-RRR-EY' reverberate over sparse (and occasionally busy) beats, bursting frantically in a kaleidoscopic self-referential composition rife with experimentation and humour. You can't help but picture a thousand gifs of a fist-pumping Grey set to the pounding percussion.

'Glow Flow' offers up a harsh, bratty acid bassline with thumping mechanical percussion, punctuated by chilling strings and lost, wandering analogue whirls. Oodles of personality end up packed neatly into this gnarly little number, which serves as a sweet interlude between the brilliantly beautiful batshittery of the first half, and the dark aural Ooze of the closer.

'Trenches' as a title evokes darkness, whether we're talking about the horrors of World War One, or that deep one in the ocean I can never remember the name of that sounds a bit like meatball sauce. It's the black sheep of the EP; whereas the first four tracks rejoiced in serving up easily digestible (and extremely fun) danceable gold nuggets, here it's the black heart of the void staring into your very soul through the sound-waves.

The melodic progression isn't an easy grab. Obviousness was swept away along with the rest of the floor, in favour of something bold and grand and at times a little unnerving. Given the length of 'Trenches' almost spans a third of the total length of the EP, it's a daring decision to dedicate such a lengthy end-portion to such a dramatic tonal shift. Luckily,Grey manages to pull this off extremely well, in what might be the most stunning juxtaposition since Can's Tago Mago segwayed from earwormy krautrock on 'Halleluwah' to the formless abstraction of 'Aumgn' & 'Peking O'.

It's tempting then to feel as though in downloading this project, you've been given somewhat of a bonus in the form of the closing track, but you mustn't think of it as being separate to the overall composition the EP strings together. Life's a series of stops and starts after all, sprinkled with shimmers and shadows, why then, should a producer, making solid and honest musical art aim to offer up anything different?