“Songs Of Eden” is the second album by Mountainwalker and Kulhed. Only twenty-four minutes total, the five song album is mostly a love letter to a cosmic landscape of sensual, youthful scenes building to a more direct statement about the world at large with “Flaming Swords”, and it’s questioning of a refrain, “what kind of world do you want to live in?”.

The opening track “Simple Now”, and its bizarre, homemade video, is a modern twist between Radiohead’s ethereal Thom Yorke and the pulsing contemporary sound of a singer/DJ duo like Sylvan Esso, setting up also the album’s central the with the opening lines “we met at a garden party in the Summertime we were young…” and the refrain’s “…walk with me back to the ending”. “What You Got”, the second track offers the first rapped verses from Mountainwalker, who charges forward like a long lost nephew of Leonard Cohen reborn out of the Golden Age of Hip Hop (check out the live version with his band from HiLo Sonics). On “In My Wandering”, Berg who performs nearly all the instruments on the album spins off a nimble Appalachian inspired solo on his well-worn lifelong Martin HD-28 acoustic guitar over Kulhed’s washed out ambient loops. The shortest song on the album, the track soars effortlessly before gently returning to earth, a swift centerpiece to the album’s overarching themes of transcendent love against the brutality and vastness of our limited, ruthless natural world. The fourth song, “Houses & Homes”, is a hypnotic dance that unfolds and contracts combining a central Fender Rhodes piano with shimmering layers of both electronic effects and acoustic instruments. Berg’s surreal lyrics both seducing and surrendering to its subject.

“Kendrick [aka Kulhed] was one the first Hip Hop producers who when he asked me to collaborate, I just instantly knew what to do with all the raw parts he’d given me”, says Mountainwalker, “I am still extremely proud and super grateful for the songs we created together. I had several chapters of my creative musical life before I found what I feel is my sound, my voice as a performer, writer, and recording artist. My collaboration with Kendrick was the turning point that set me on my way as Mountainwalker. Both our albums together form the first fully original recordings I made as Mountainwalker.”

Berg adopted the stage name Mountainwalker, the translation of his German-Jewish ancestral name, when releasing his first mixtapes as strictly an emcee

“I began as a bassist in my teenagers culminating with several years at the New School’s Jazz and Contemporary Music Conservatory in New York City, before departing to try my pen as a songwriter, the man and his guitar (and harmonica often). When I moved to Nashville, “Songs Of Eden” was the first batch of songs I worked on and recorded in my house that I bought in 2014 and was slowly renovating myself.

The final verse of the album on “Flaming Swords” is a message in a bottle to the world, a love letter at large, perhaps a prayer:

“Where is my love how is my love how can I keep these memories for good pull through to golden shores oh Mother Mary I’m prepared to be poppa like Atlas rest your head on my shoulder I got this Lord knows I’ve seen darker days wandered many years that’s how I found my faith and why I appreciate the value of a good woman’s love the spirit and the energy that surrounds you before during and after I found you tears of joy mix with sounds of laughter chemistry is mystery but you got is what I’m after in this daily grind set against a world on fire we find true love is always simplest quintessential to our sacred existence beatific words sizzle like metallic choirs my desire I want to live in a world without border bloodshed or hoarders // where everyone has the chance to love and live freely with flaming swords write their names clearly upon the unbreakable chain of human machinery taste the hope left behind by the flood and the pain the loss and the gain let loose with you when my day is through it is with you i wish to take shelter in our house and in our lives we can decide how to live where is my love who is my love in the village or on the block come closer and stand next to me what kind of world do you want to live in?”

And the simple repeating response from long-time friend and singer, Mary Jennings:

“I am here to stay couldn’t cut me away…”

All Lyrics by Mountainwalker (A. Berg)