Avalon Emerson made her name as a dance DJ and producer long before she decided to try making actual songs, and then she turned out to be really good at that. Partially inspired by Jeff Tweedy’s book How To Write One Song, she started Avalon Emerson & The Charm, a project that exists on some strange continuum between thumping club music and fuzzy dream-pop. In 2023, they released the excellent debut albunm & The Charm and became a Stereogum Band To Watch.
Earlier this year, Avalon Emerson released a series of tracks that she calls Perpetual Emotion Machine. Emerson made that music specifically for her DJ sets. Those singles came out one at a time, and they’re now grouped together as an EP. Now, she’s bringing back the Charm to release “Eden,” a new single that isn’t part of that series. It’s the first piece of music from Avalon Emerson & The Charm (as opposed to just solo Emerson) since that debut album cycle.
“Eden” is a shaggy, shimmery indie-pop song driven by a funky-ass bassline and a busy breakbeat. It captures the same feeling as the & The Charm album, its combination of hazy float and physical propulsion scratching a mental itch that I didn’t even know I had. In a press release, Emerson says that the “Eden” studio session “made me realize that making this kind of music is not just a detour from DJing and dance music, but the entrance to a deep cave, full of passages to wander.“
In the Ben Turok-directed “Eden” video, we see Emerson at home in Upstate New York, playing with her band. Then she has to rush off to JFK so that she can jump on a flight to a European DJ gig, something that she was really doing while shooting the video. Below, check out that clip and Emerson’s upcoming tour dates, which are split between DJ sets and shows with the Charm.
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TOUR DATES:
11/21 – Manchester, UK @ Warehouse Project *
11/22 – Dublin, Ireland @ Fidelity Studio *
12/05 – Miami, FL @ Factory Town *
3/31 – Glasgow, UK @ Stereo ^
4/01 – Manchester, UK @ Yes (Pink Room) ^
4/02 – London, UK @ Islington Assembly Hall ^
4/04 – Paris, France @ Badaboum ^
4/06 – Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Paradiso Upstairs ^
4/08 – Berlin, Germany @ Säälchen ^
* DJ set
^ & The Charm set
“Eden” is out now on Dead Oceans.
