EDEN'S ISLAND (WOOD SLIPCASE) (CLEAR FOREST/LEAVES

The ultimate reissue of one of the worldAEs most important albums in the field of Exotica, Jazz and even Proto Psychedelic Music from 1960 - and the first official reissue ever! This edition is pressed on Clear Forest/Leaves Splatter vinyl and housed in a wooden cover. It also includes a 24 page booklet. This reissue of Eden Ahbez' sole album includes 20 almost unreleased bonus songs from different sessions. Carefully restored and remastered from original master tapes by prolific grammy-nominated sound engineer Jessica Thompson. The artist Eden Ahbez was not only a skilled composer and performer who wrote the hit tune 'Nature boyo for the classic 1940s crooner Nat King Cole but also a forefather and probably the sole inventor of the hippie lifestyle that became a world wide movement by the mid 1960s. Co Produced by movie maker Brian Chidester, who now, after 20 years of research, completed the full time documentary movie 'As The Wind - The Enchanted Life Of Eden Ahbezo: https://www.edenahbez.com. Now here we go with a project that can easily be labeled a mammoth. Who remembers Eden Ahbez actually, except for a couple of born too late retro hippies' Well, here we go with the story: It is 1960, RockAEnAERoll has just lost a couple of its protagonists during this and the previous year, the time of the great balladeers has just begun, but soon will run out due to the new and exciting beat invasion. In US mainstream the tiki culture has reached a certain peak and is about to collapse, but still goes strong and with it comes the so called oexoticao music, a crossover between smooth jazz and swing, Latin grooves, haunting melodies that are rooted in the folkloristic sounds from different parts of this world, plus weird sound effects that often create a spooky jungle or dreamy island beach atmosphere. It can even bend your mind that far you would see palm trees growing out of your speakers and witness monkeys and parrots having fun in your room. Eden Ahbez, born in 1908, passed in 1995, a man living dropout and hippie lifestyle way before the movement became what people remember it to be in the mid 60s, a beat poet and composer who wrote the hit tune oNature boyo that gave Nat King Cole his first big success in 1948, approaches the field of exotica music from a different point of view creating an epic concept album about an utopian society living in peace and harmony on an island far away from the modern western world as we know it. And indeed we find many trademarks of the prototypical exotica music beginning with this relaxed groove combining easy listening swing and Latin patterns, peaceful, dreamy and even transcendental vocal melodies, tinges of folk music from around the world including powerful dances and a whole color palette of mind expanding sounds giving the whole music an even greater depth and width. The latter being created entirely with real instruments such as Eden Ahbez' wood-flute. Some tunes are rather gentle and relaxed with the lyrics being narrated, which adds much to the epic feel of the album. Since this is a really unique effort, now aEdenAEs Islando alone is a masterpiece of proto psychedelic music and showcases the peak of AhbeAEs creativity, but he did write and record music before and after, as mentioned above. And he inspired people along the way, he still does, even decades after his passing. When a young record collector named Brian Chidester found a picture of Ahbe with a youthful Brian Wilson of BEACH BOYS fame dating from probably 1967, he felt the urge to research and investigate deeply into the life of Ahbe, who was more of a mystical figure, obscured by the passing of time rather than the fairly well recognised allfather of the hippie lifestyle, without whom there would have not been such a movement at all and certainly no woodstock, not much psychedelic music and no such things. At least not in the way that they did happen. So Mr. Chidester embarked on journey of more than twenty years that culminates in a movie, aAs the wind: The enchanted life of Eden Ahbezo, telling the story of one of pop cu