Sometimes you discover new music by following a link on a social media site, on a friends recommendation, on the radio or at a gig.
Electric Eden I discovered on a quay side in a fishing village in Cornwall, random! There I was minding my own business during a family holiday doing ‘a bit of culture’ on a non surf day and decided to go to a fish festival. Walking around sampling food, taking in the sights and sounds I heard music in the distance and took a walk over in the direction it was coming from.
For the next 30 minutes I was transfixed by this trio playing on a stage to an ever growing crowd. They played a mixture of original material and threw in a couple of covers for good measure. I had a chat afterwards and asked them to give me the opportunity of sharing them with you, so here we are!
Introduce yourself to our readers, who are you and where are you from?
We are a three piece Folk/ Folk Rock band from the South/South West. We started out at University as part of a project but were approached one day when busking and one thing lead to another from there.
We gig mainly in and around Hampshire in places like Portsmouth, Chichester, Andover and Winchester writing our own original songs and stories inspired by traditional folk tales and personal experiences.
How did you get started?
We are three mates who met at Uni and just started jamming one day. We are about writing our own music drawing on each of our own interests and taking inspiration from what is important to us. We have now been performing together for 2 years this summer and are nearly finished and close to releasing our first EP.
Where do you take your influences from?
We are heavily influenced by artists such as Seth Lakeman, Show of Hands, Mumford and Sons, as well as English and Irish traditional music.
Tell us about your song writing.
We don’t have one person who writes our songs, it is very much a collaborative thing, we each take ideas into rehearsals and just try things out to see if they work. Recording wise, each song takes about three days and we are currently finishing off the last few on our EP.
What do you think about the current music business?
There seems to be quite a lot of the same old sound coming through in the charts, it’s great to see artists such as Mumford and Sons up there with the more ‘current’ popular music today. The Folk and Country artists and sound seem to be making a comeback and we definitely hope this continues!
Who are you listening to right now?
Right now we are into a few different artists. Matt is listening to the haunting sounds of Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin and Bellowhead. Paul is listening to Glen Hansard who wrote the music for Once and Al can’t quite decide on one artist!
What bands/artists are you into?
Although we primarily take our influences from the artists mentioned, we each have very different musical interests inside and outside the Folk genre. Matt tends to be the one out of the three of us who always has something like Lakeman or Show of Hands playing in the car but he is also a massive fan of artists such as Jason Mraz and the John Butler Trio. Paul has an interest in musicals, Green Day and Mumford and Sons. Al has the most Eclectic Itunes you’ve ever seen/ heard and will happily play the most bizarre but awesome sounds to us.
Who is your dream to tour with?
Definitely someone like Seth Lakeman but the ultimate support gig would be with Mumford and Sons.
So what’s next for Electric Eden?
After completing our EP and sending that out, our main focus will be to focus on gigging in newer areas and to keep sharing our own, others and traditional music around the country as folk music should be.
