For anyone that has spent significant time on this blog, or who has followed its many postings over the years, the subject of Eden Ahbez‘s “Scripture of the Golden Age” project remains both perennial and somewhat mysterious. Yours truly (Brian Chidester) has had several articles about it published in newspapers and magazines, including one about…
Love for Eden Ahbez’s imaginary landscape Eden’s Island continues with the incredible installation and tribute album described in the press release below. Here is also the link to purchase the LP: https://www.escho.net/shop/peter-peter-mermaid-bay Christian Friedländer is the exhibition designer of Coastal Imaginaries at the Danish pavilion at this year’s Biennale Architettura di Venezia. He is also…
The Eden’s Island Blog received a press release today from the law office of Julie Romersa, representing Joe Romersa, the last collaborator of Eden Ahbez. For those not already familiar, Romersa worked with the “Nature Boy” composer from roughly 1987-1995, on a project Ahbez called “The Scripture of the Golden Age.” Romersa, via his lawyer,…
Take a step behind the curtains of “Eden Ahbez’s Dharmaland” and see how the album was made, track-by-track, with its producer Brian Chidester in the new “Making of Dharmaland” podcast. Each episode is available for free from the Eden Ahbez homepage here. It is also available on Apple Podcasts here and on Spotify here. There…
Ahbez / Beatnik / Counter-Culture / Eden Ahbez / Eden's Island / Exotica / Gypsy Boots / Hippie / Joe Romersa / Nature Boy / Tiki
In February 2020 the Kenneth Karmiole Annual Endowed Research Fellowship was awarded to the filmmakers of “As the Wind: The Enchanted Life of Eden Ahbez.” Before the filmmakers could embark upon their research venture to complete this grant, however, the pandemic happened. The University of California-Santa Barbara Library Special Research Collections, to which the Karmiole…
The gates are finally open! “Eden Ahbez’s Dharmaland,” arranged and performed by Ixtahuele, is available through Subliminal Sounds Records in all media platforms, from vinyl double-LP to CD to digital download to streaming. Click here to get your copy. For those unaware, Ahbez wrote the music on “Dharmaland” in the immediate aftermath of his lone…
It’s official. “As the Wind: The Enchanted Life of Eden Ahbez” has launched a crowdsourcing campaign and we need your help. The link is here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/as-the-wind-the-enchanted-life-of-eden-ahbez#/ For those fans who are unaware, long-time Ahbez historian Brian Chidester teamed up with filmmaker John Winer in 2017, and the pair have been working on a feature-length documentary…
“Eden Ahbez’s Dharmaland,” arranged and performed by Ixtahuele, is just six days from being officially released (June 11, 2021), but already it has been chosen as the contemporary album of the month by the UK “Guardian” newspaper. See the full review here: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/jun/04/ixtahuele-eden-ahbezs-dharmaland-review-striking-take-on-an-extraordinary-songwriter There is also a second lead single from the album out now,…
“Manna” is the first single from the forthcoming album, “Eden Ahbez’s Dharmaland,” due July 11, 2021. The link is here: “Dharmaland,” arranged and performed by Ìxtahuele, is the first-ever recording of this long-lost masterwork by the original hippie composer of “Nature Boy” and “Eden’s Island.” Resurrected from Ahbez’s unrecorded sheet music, c. 1961-63, Ìxtahuele has…
J. William Lloyd was a late 19th/early 20th century radical American author. His subjects included theosophy, anti-statism, anarchy, holistic diets, and a back-to-nature lifestyle. Among other published tomes, he wrote “The Scripture of the Serene Life” (1921) and “The Natural Man: A Romance of the Golden Age” (1902), which together influenced Eden Ahbez’s final project,…
David Peterkofsky, host and producer of the podcast “For Keeps,” has just released a new episode and it features Brian Chidester, chronicler of Eden Ahbez and co-director of the documentary “As the Wind: The Enchanted Life of Eden Ahbez.” To download or stream the episode… follow the link here: https://forkeepspodcast.com/s11e6-nature-boy-eden-ahbez-celebrated-by-brian-chidester Among other things, the two…
Roy Behrens—a retired professor of Graphic Design at the University of Northern Iowa and published author on the topic of Dazzle Ships (among other things)—has recently published an article about his pen-pal relationship with Eden Ahbez in the early 1960s in the most recent issue of the Iowa Source magazine. (Read it here.) For those…
The November 3rd episode of the Qwasa Qwasa radio show (out of London) is being dedicated to Eden Ahbez. It will be hosted by DJ Levi Adriaenssens and will air from 12 to 2 CET on Threads Radio: https://threadsradio.com/ The show will be uploaded on Mixcloud afterwards (see here). Below is the press release description: Together…
Academy Award nominated director Nicolas Winding Refn has a website—byNWR.com—and it currently hosts a feature article about Eden Ahbez written by yours truly (Brian Chidester), as well a preview of “As the Wind,” the documentary film I am currently co-directing about Ahbez with John Winer. The link to the article is here: https://www.bynwr.com/articles/visions-of-glory There is…
“Dharmaland,” the collection of music written by Eden Ahbez in 1961-63 (in the immediate aftermath of “Eden’s Island”), but left in sheet music form by the composer during his lifetime, has been recorded by Swedish exotica quintet Ìxtahuele. The sessions for the LP began in July 2019 and ran through early 2020 and included guest…
EDEN’S ISLAND 