In Conversation with Eden Rain
[UNPUBLISHED:] For any readers that may be new to your music, can you tell us a bit about how you began your interest in music as well as describe your sound?
[EDEN RAIN:] It’s not super original but my interest in music started when I was a kid! My dad would make me compilation CDs and my mum would sing. The mixes was a combination of Outkast and Bob Dylan and The Carpenters, so I would say that growing up with a crazy mix of music helped when it came to making my own music and mixing genres. I’d describe my own alternative sound as a blend of indie alt-pop and soul, lyrics are also really important to me so I love writing poetry and converting them to lyrics.
[UNPUBLISHED:] What was the inspiration behind your latest single, “Oh God”?
[EDEN RAIN:] When I wrote ‘Oh God’ I was having a chaotic time, I had just come back from a holiday where I had a lot of time to myself to write in my diary. I was writing with the producer of the song- Josef and the line ‘oh god, maybe I should take more drugs’ jumped out of my book. I don’t really remember writing the rest of the song because it came together really easily and sort of just sprung out around that line. It’s definitely like a massive brain dump into a song.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Congratulations on the upcoming release of your debut EP, Gutter Vision! How do you feel knowing that you will be sharing this project with the world?
[EDEN RAIN:] Thank you!! I’m so excited! I’ve always loved the idea of releasing a longer project and I’m so excited about the idea of being able to express myself in a wider project that’s not limited to a single. It’s so fun to see the weird thoughts I have resonating with other people's weird thoughts and I love that
[UNPUBLISHED:] What do you love about this project? Is there a particular lyric on Gutter Vision that you are especially excited about?
[EDEN RAIN:] Without giving the game away, I always used to swerve away from love songs ect (I didn’t feel like I had something new to say about love). But I think in the EP there is a lot of songs that feel like love songs to family, to friends and are just a really nice chaotic blend of stories, one of them is even based on a book I loved when I was younger. I have combined a lot of my artwork in the videos and in the music.
[UNPUBLISHED:] I absolutely loved the style of your video, “Rent In The City,” and it evokes an almost nostalgic emotion in me. What was your thought process behind this and can we expect more videos similar to this style?
[EDEN RAIN:] Thank you! I always make sort of like rough sketchy plans for what I want the music videos to look like but then I get in too deep and spend too much time on it so I continue and make them myself. I turn into a little hobbit and spend hours holed up working on them and I act like I really hate it but I love doing it and I forced it on myself. “Rent In The City” was so fun and feels nostalgic to me too because it’s literally just me running around Leeds and London with a camcorder and now that time feels so far away. To get to sleep at night I listen to my demos and imagine music videos for them so hopefully, there will be more in the same style !!
[UNPUBLISHED:] What was the biggest challenge with creating and putting together your debut EP?
[EDEN RAIN:] The biggest challenge I think is selecting songs that fit together and deciding what to release. I write a lot a lot and love to play with genres but I wanted this EP to feel super cohesive and something that if you listened to any one of them it would feel like it’s from the same body of work, but also it needs to feel different enough that each song is fresh and exciting. This sounds really dumb but I want the EP to feel like the Ribena of my personality, like a pure cordial.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Do you have a track that feels especially close to your heart on the EP, if so which would it be?
[EDEN RAIN:] Every day my favourite one changes (usually depending of how much I have overplayed it) but I will stay diplomatic and say i love all of my song children equally, because I got the special feeling after I wrote each of them that made me realise they were the ones I wanted to release! I will say that there is one song on the EP that my housemate, Taylor, is obsessed with and plays at top volume every day and sends it to all her family and friends and has planned a whole music video in her head for it… so although I don’t have favourites, Taylor definitely does.
[UNPUBLISHED:] What was your creative process behind this project?
[EDEN RAIN:] My creative process behind the EP is usually throw everything at the wall and see what sticks hahaha. I drink lots of tea and eat lots of the salt and vinegar M+S twirls and then I go and write a song, armed with a stack of like 50 notebooks. And then I write and doodle and buy loads of meal deals. I like to pretend I’m just writing for me and that nobody will ever hear it which is how I’m able to write kind of bluntly about my life ect, because I’m not thinking of how people will see me after I write it.. that’s a problem for the day of the EP release I guess.