No Future by EDEN (Album, Alternative R&B): Reviews, Ratings, Credits, Song list - Rate Your Music
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No Future
By EDEN
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ArtistEDEN
TypeAlbum
Released14 February 2020
RYM Rating 2.86 / 5.00.5 from 687 ratings
Genres
Descriptors
melancholic, love, mellow, melodic, male vocalist, passionate, existential, concept album, introspective, abstract, ethereal, tropical, bittersweet, soothing
Language English

Track listing

  • 1 Good Morning 3:29
  • 2 In 0:31
  • 3 Hertz 3:18
  • 4 Static 0:48
  • 5 Projector 3:42
  • 6 Love, Death, Distraction 4:17
  • 7 How to Sleep 2:37
  • 8 Calm Down 2:35
  • 9 Just Saying 4:06
  • 10 Fomo 3:09
  • 11 So Far So Good 3:25
  • 12 Isohel 4:30
  • 13 ???? 2:59
  • 14 Tides 1:43
  • 15 Rushing 5:07
  • 16 $treams 3:20
  • 17 2020 3:31
  • 18 Out 0:42
  • 19 [untitled] 3:36
  • Total length: 57:25

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Issues

1 Issue

1 Issue

Credits

Credits

  • EDEN
    writer, producer, vocals

4 Reviews

  • 5.00 stars 1 Good Morning
  •   2 In
  • 5.00 stars 3 Hertz
  • 5.00 stars 4 Static
  • 5.00 stars 5 Projector
  • 5.00 stars 6 Love, Death, Distraction
  • 5.00 stars 7 How to Sleep
  • 4.50 stars 8 Calm Down
  • 5.00 stars 9 Just Saying
  • 5.00 stars 10 Fomo
  • 5.00 stars 11 So Far So Good
  • 5.00 stars 12 Isohel
  • 5.00 stars 13 ????
  • 5.00 stars 14 Tides
  • 5.00 stars 15 Rushing
  • 4.50 stars 16 $treams
  • 4.50 stars 17 2020
  •   18 Out
  • 5.00 stars 19 [untitled]
i will go against the grain and passionately defend my favorite album of all time, EDEN's "no future."

taking influence from artists like frank ocean, no future takes a starkly different direction than past releases from EDEN. alt r&b with indietronica touches is something we've really never heard from the artist before, with maybe a taste of it on vertigo. this isn't a bad thing though, as i feel that EDEN manages to make every track on this hour long project engaging and meaningful in their own way.

the hate given to this album is justified in its own way, you may hear a lot of EDEN's influences in this project, or you could just not be into the more poetic and cryptic style of songwriting he takes here instead of the immediately relatable style. however, i would argue that it just makes the album all the more special and unique, and something wholly different from his past work.

songs like hertz, isohel, and rushing are definite standouts here, although every track is its own journey. the bright and colorful sounds mix beautifully with EDEN's somber vocals, and shows his pure, raw talent in an incredible way.

while i love EDEN's past releases to death, no future feels like a stepping off point for his career. as i've listened to EDEN's releases as they've come out, i have only seem him grow and develop into his own sound and find his sense of artistry. i simply cannot explain my disappointment with the wave of dislike for this album, even from passionate EDEN fans like myself.

10/10, always. waiting eagerly for his next project to see where it goes from here
Published
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I want to preface this review by saying that the reason I don’t like this album is because I love EDEN so much. This dude is one of my favorite vocalists I’ve ever heard due to his incredibly distinct voice that’s simultaneously beautifully fragile and inspiringly confident. His EDM background allowed him to shift into his more cinematic Indietronica/Alternative R&B era so smoothly and with such a knack for satisfying buildups and payoffs. There’s something special about the way his music flows so wondrously that just captivates me and mesmerizes me like few other artists can. He’s an unbelievably talented dude that’s made music I genuinely feel is timeless in the form of his End Credits and I Think You Think Too Much of Me EPs, and even parts of his last full length to a lesser extent. To say I was excited for this one is a massive understatement, as I went into this hoping and expecting to hear something that completely blew me away. After hearing the introductory track Good Morning, I was even preemptively anticipating this album to potentially turn into a surprise 10/10 masterpiece in my eyes. However, the more I listen to this record the more bored I become with it.

This album is like walking down a dirt path by yourself with no interesting scenery whatsoever. Sure, it’s an isolated experience that may find you experiencing deep, introspective and even beautiful thoughts - but that’s all coming from within your head and is not caused by the million trees you pass that are all the same. This music is those trees, it offers a comfortable and peaceful place for you to be alone with your thoughts, but it’s kind of alarming that an artist I love so much just sounds like lame background music to me. Listening to this album with all of my attention and focusing on nothing else has the same effect on me that his best material has when it’s just on in the background. Even the much slower pace of a release like Vertigo had me so much more enthralled with what he was doing than this thing does, as he understood how to make all the quiet and hollow moments feel emotionally significant and powerful. There just isn’t that same sense of power on this thing that gripped me so much in his older music. There’s far too much empty space with no real reason to focus on what’s being said. It pains me to say that an EDEN album is uninteresting as he’s always been incredible at making even the most minimalist material sound captivating, but I really think he’s missed the mark with this one.

I’ll admit I went into this hoping for something that was a bit more of an upbeat step past Vertigo, but that’s not to say I wouldn’t have been fine with a somber record like this as long as it was more interesting. EDEN is at his best when his vocals are simmering over complimentary and passionate instrumentals that bring out the best in his typically phenomenal voice and lyrics, but here he sounds nearly acapella. The instrumentals on this record are by far the weakest he has ever put to tape, as often these songs legitimately have no payoff whatsoever. There are so few instrumental sections on the album at all, as almost every single second is dominated by the vocal performance and the instrumentals are thrown completely to the wayside. It’s all just subtle background noise that doesn’t seem like it could have taken much thought and effort whatsoever, which is just completely pathetic considering how high EDEN has set his own standards. This thing completely lacks the sonic ebb and flow that his music has mastered over the years, resulting in it just being such a massive disappointment. The most instrumentally diverse and intriguing song on the entire album is the fantastic opener good morning, but you’d expect that song to have just been exactly what it is - an opener. It serves as a thematic introduction to the record, but in terms of intensity and quality it’s quite easily the climax of the whole thing. I just don’t understand how the guy could have written this entire album with the first note on the entire 57 minute album being the most impactful. It really hurts my soul being this harsh on this thing, but I just can’t justify how painfully slow it’s pacing is.

The one saving grace of this is EDEN himself, as I’m convinced this guy could outsing most artists in his sleep. He has such an attention grabbing, unique and soulful voice that I’ve never been able to get enough of. His vocals have always been written in a way that perfectly compliments the progressive and grandiose nature of his sprawling compositions. I have to say that the writing behind his vocals on this album are kind of similarly stagnant to the music itself in comparison to his old stuff, but I don’t think it’s possible for him to sing poorly so there’s that. His lyricism is still sharp and his vocals are still poignant, but it’s just not enough to save how bland the songwriting is on this thing. It’s like the most minimalist version of him imaginable, and he doesn’t harness that simplicity to emphasize an inner beauty whatsoever. There’s just so much directionless meandering that doesn’t amount to anything whatsoever. Of course I want to fall in love with every lyric he writes and every huge melody he builds up to, but when those melodic buildups just result in the song ending instead of turning into the huge explosion they should it just feels hollow. There’s so much wasted potential on here that what’s missing winds up being the only thing I can even think of while I’m listening to it. I almost find myself imagining different things on top of this music that don’t even exist because it sounds so much better when I use my imagination to physically manifest a better EDEN album. This was supposed to be the positive paragraph where I talked about all the things I actually liked within the album, but I’ve found myself accidently returning to how disappointed I was. I guess that’s just symbolic of how hard it is to find the positives in this album no matter how hard I push myself to do so. I guess there are a couple songs I like, as they would have made for some pretty good slow-burner ballads amidst a stronger overall record. Songs such as how to sleep and isohel have some really cool ideas that actually manage to rise above the slumber of the rest of the record, the latter in particular serving as a reminder of how great this record could have been.

I wish I could have fallen in love with this album so badly. If anything, it’s just made me appreciate just how fantastic the rest of the EDEN discography truly is. The way this thing is so painfully minimalist and conservative with any sort of payoff or gratification just makes me appreciate the grandiose and satisfying moments of his other releases twice as much. I mean really, vertigo was starting to fade out of my memory just a little bit by the time this came out and now it seems like an undeniable masterpiece in comparison. Listening to that record again after this one was just as great as experiencing it for the first time because it served as a reminder that I still love this dude’s music and that it’s not just me growing out of it that made this so bad. As much as he tends to lean into quieter and more mellow territory, I never thought he would put out something so hollow and uninteresting that it never actually even builds up into anything substantial whatsoever. Despite being an absolute master of the art of buildup and payoff, EDEN has created anticlimax incarnate with no future. I’m a massive fan of this guy and I adore everything else he’s released, but I’d be lying if I said this was much of anything other than a disappointment for me. - 5/10 (Best Songs - good morning, how to sleep, isohel)
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  • 1.50 stars 1 Good Morning
  •   2 In
  • 3.50 stars 3 Hertz
  •   4 Static
  • 3.00 stars 5 Projector
  • 2.00 stars 6 Love, Death, Distraction
  • 2.50 stars 7 How to Sleep
  • 2.00 stars 8 Calm Down
  • 2.00 stars 9 Just Saying
  • 1.50 stars 10 Fomo
  • 2.00 stars 11 So Far So Good
  • 2.00 stars 12 Isohel
  • 2.00 stars 13 ????
  • 2.00 stars 14 Tides
  • 2.50 stars 15 Rushing
  • 2.00 stars 16 $treams
  • 2.00 stars 17 2020
  •   18 Out
  • 2.50 stars 19 [untitled]
Production not anything special, no future sounds like some Soundcloud Alt R&B album of middling quality except for a few cuts (especially hertz, whose variety of instrumentations easily stands out). And plenty of disturbing synthetic at the end of the songs and all the abrupt end of lines feel pretentious instead of sincere.
Published
Listening to EDEN is like hearing back from an old high school friend.
Have you ever heard back from an old high school friend, where fragments of their personality and demeanor resemble the relationship you used to have but you also acknowledged that they've grown and moved past. They decided to move onto better things, carving way for new part of their life. That's exactly the feeling I get from EDEN's new album No Future.

My history with EDEN is one I feel a lot of fans have near identical experience with and that's with a past history of EDM. EDEN on his first two EPs and projects on The Eden Project, used to carve Art Pop and Electronic elements to create something inbetween, but that was the reason you came, not the reason you stayed. Jon has always had a way of articulating his thoughts to a point where it's not completely cryptic, but it's not 100% sensical or clear either. A lot of the subject matter was left up to the listener's interpretation, but it also felt like you understood what was being communicated, and it was beautiful. EDEN was my first ever "stan", as a lot of people around that time would probably confess too.

However time has moved on, this is EDEN's second big album with his first being 2018's vertigo, an album which I found to be a little bit of a mixed bag. Most of Jon's electronic appeal seems to have been pushed to the background on that record and a lack of clear song structure seemed to have dull the project down with what sounded a lot like filler. There were some stand outs however, with songs like gold and love; not wrong. I was hoping EDEN would figure out what made those songs and his past songs work so well and drive that home on his next endevour, so how did it play out?

No Future starts off with an extremely abrasive opener "Good Morning", and this is still a highlight of the album, the synths are incredibly loud and bombastic, and these musical fireworks used to be highlights on EDEN's older works too, so it's not a surprise that it clicked with me. However, this energy only seems to exist on the opener.

My problem with vertigo seems to exist greatly on most of these tracks and that's a lack of song structure. I think this can work great on projects which garner extreme focus but a lot of this album doesn't feel focused, and that's reflected in its 19 track 57 minute runtime. A lot of the songs feel unmemorable and don't exist to drive home any album narrative but to act as a lot of backdrop. Tracks Hertz, Fomo, How To Sleep, Tides, it all feels a little too strung out and forgettable.

However one thing I commend is how Jon has listened to his older fans on this one, while also maininting his newer sound he crafted. There's still a lot of dreamy guitar and violin cuts on vertigo, but there's also a lot of heavy synth work and EDM inspired instrumentals, like on the track "projector", with funky bass kick drums and trap snares, I loved this track and is definitely a highlight on the album.

In conclusion, I don't mind that EDEN has taken more inspirations from artists like Frank Ocean or traditional indie artists, I just feel like EDEN doesn't fully grasp yet how to cut out the fat, structure an album, or keep song structures interesting enough to warrant more listens. I feel he was a master of this on his EPs, but now he is going in a more subtle and laid back direction without the extreme synth explosions he isn't too sure how to keep attention going through a 57 minute album.

I wish my old high school friend the best of luck with his future endevours and I will definitely be checking into his facebook profile every now and again, and I hope he can find success in the new path he's carving out for himself.

6/10
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Catalog

Ratings: 687
Cataloged: 102
Track rating sets:Track ratings: 77
Rating distribution
Rating trend
Page 1 2 .. 4 .. 9 .. 13 .. 18 .. 23 .. 27 .. 32 .. 36 .. 41 .. 46 >>
21 May 2024
joe_l4  4.50 stars
20 May 2024
joaqnm  3.50 stars
  • 3.00 stars 1 Good Morning
  • 3.00 stars 2 In
  • 3.00 stars 3 Hertz
  • 3.00 stars 4 Static
  • 4.00 stars 5 Projector
  • 4.00 stars 6 Love, Death, Distraction
  • 4.50 stars 7 How to Sleep
  • 3.50 stars 8 Calm Down
  • 3.50 stars 9 Just Saying
  • 4.00 stars 10 Fomo
  • 4.00 stars 11 So Far So Good
  • 4.50 stars 12 Isohel
  • 3.00 stars 13 ????
  • 3.50 stars 14 Tides
  • 3.00 stars 15 Rushing
  • 3.00 stars 16 $treams
  • 4.00 stars 17 2020
  • 4.00 stars 18 Out
  • 4.00 stars 19 [untitled]
16 May 2024
Taspa  4.00 stars
6 May 2024
GoingToAnvil  4.50 stars Amazing
5 May 2024
1 May 2024
doctorubo  4.00 stars has been my favourite at least once
29 Apr 2024
thelarsvolta  4.00 stars parts i love, the rest i like
22 Apr 2024
16 Apr 2024
Reni583  2.00 stars
12 Apr 2024
rian290  2.00 stars Not for me
  • 2.00 stars 1 Good Morning
  •   2 In
  • 2.50 stars 3 Hertz
  • 2.00 stars 4 Static
  • 2.00 stars 5 Projector
  • 2.00 stars 6 Love, Death, Distraction
  • 2.50 stars 7 How to Sleep
  • 2.50 stars 8 Calm Down
  • 3.00 stars 9 Just Saying
  • 2.50 stars 10 Fomo
  • 3.00 stars 11 So Far So Good
  • 2.50 stars 12 Isohel
  • 3.00 stars 13 ????
  • 2.50 stars 14 Tides
  • 3.00 stars 15 Rushing
  • 2.00 stars 16 $treams
  • 2.50 stars 17 2020
  •   18 Out
  • 2.50 stars 19 [untitled]
1 Apr 2024
netsi_  3.00 stars
30 Mar 2024
27 Mar 2024
ryful  1.50 stars
26 Mar 2024
Saneffe  3.50 stars
26 Mar 2024
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Track listing

  • 1 Good Morning 3:29
  • 2 In 0:31
  • 3 Hertz 3:18
  • 4 Static 0:48
  • 5 Projector 3:42
  • 6 Love, Death, Distraction 4:17
  • 7 How to Sleep 2:37
  • 8 Calm Down 2:35
  • 9 Just Saying 4:06
  • 10 Fomo 3:09
  • 11 So Far So Good 3:25
  • 12 Isohel 4:30
  • 13 ???? 2:59
  • 14 Tides 1:43
  • 15 Rushing 5:07
  • 16 $treams 3:20
  • 17 2020 3:31
  • 18 Out 0:42
  • 19 [untitled] 3:36
  • Total length: 57:25

Credits

  • EDEN
    writer, producer, vocals
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Contributions

Contributors to this release: Pengwin546, RamonRDuarte, TheMartinezCampaign, e8c
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