Press
« Incarnation is a powerful album, a journey of the mind rather than a set of songs. It works on a symbolic level, tapping into our inner being. It speaks of trials by fire, long nights of the soul, the blues as the only music we need, rather than want. Eden’s playing is stunning. He is a wild virtuoso, driving his strings harder and further than it is reasonable to expect. The expressiveness of his playing, notes whirring with the vibrating scrap of fingers on steel strings, and pulsing with luminous oscillation, is captivating. Eden’s playing is on a par with the best, and his tracks explode out of the speakers like a plume of mind-altering gas, filling our heads and commanding our senses. »
« a dizzying odyssey of strings. Recorded in the French hillside, the album feels untethered from weight, skipping from rocks to clouds with a lightness that’s fleeting but incredibly welcome. »
The Raven sings the Blues 19 December, 2023
« Raoul Eden has singular influences, which he puts down to the crossroad position of his roots – between the eastern and western world, north and south. Arabic music has always been present around him. He has also modified his Guild D55 acoustic guitar with an extra fret that allows him to play microtonal embellishments like in Tuareg blues or Turkish saz. A lot of western classical music was played in the house where he grew up, and that could be another hidden influence in his style, that lyrical flow.Raoul Eden has a firm rooting in the spiritual world, from the transcendental materialism of the french philosopher Deleuze, which studies in detail, to the esoteric theosophy of Ibn Arabî the famous Sufi Master from Andalusia, or Master Eckart, the Dominican theologian.He tries to put a foot in the door of enlightenment by driving a vertical temporality out of history. With his guitar, he tries to fold time and space in intensivity. »