Edena Gardens 
While they’ve by no means been slight in the past, the new record from Edena Gardens is the band at their absolute heaviest and headiest. A massive record by all measurements, Quintessence clocks in at a 79+ minutes and finds the prolific El Paraiso band divining some of their most sculptural work yet. Atop the tectonic drumming from Jakob Jakob Skøtt, the trio clamp down into a cavernous exhumation of sound, expanding their palette of glowering guitars and fuzzed bass into six passages of sinuous tremor. Nicklas Sørensen’s guitar work slithers out of the speakers, a liquid light tone that feeds along the ridges between jazz, prog, and psych. Rude and Skøtt bend and buffer, a dynamic rhythm section that’s constantly reactive, constantly in motion.
The record starts out deep in the molten Earth, sifting through drone fog on “Nigredo,” but by the time the band swaps to the second side “Calcified Bone & Weathered Stone” sees them as nimble as ever, winding around phrases in a rain-slicked slalom. They’re back to scorched earth missives on “Amber Deposits,” a scarred piece that’s rife with ash and ache, but there’s room for funk as well, a motion that rears its head on “Into Citrinitas,” the album’s lightest piece by far. It acts as a stained glass doorway to the end of the record. The funk quickly tips them into prog hallways, entering Bundles territory as it creeps through later period Soft Machine shades. The record resolves into one of the band’s longest songs yet, a side-long stunner that pushes them away from the earthen rumble of the record and towards something more cosmic. Past fans will find plenty to love, but this is for all the heads, new and old, one of the year’s deepest dives.