There is something fitting about Odyssey being the title of Eden Samara’s second album. The London-based Canadian artist has always approached electronic music as a place where seemingly distant worlds can coexist: songwriting and club music, folk and jungle, vulnerability and euphoria, the intimate language of the voice and the physical force of the dancefloor.
Growing up in the mountains of western Canada, Samara began writing folk songs and performing in theatre before discovering club culture during trips to Europe and eventually moving to London in 2019. Her 2022 debut album Rough Night established a singular voice somewhere between freaky club-pop, R&B and experimental electronics, with collaborators including Parris, Call Super and Shanti Celeste. Four years later, Odyssey expands that universe considerably, bringing together jungle, choral arrangements, live harp and a wide range of electronic textures alongside her increasingly assured songwriting.
The album takes its name seriously. Inspired in part by Homer’s epic, as well as works including The Alchemist and The Picture of Dorian Gray, Odyssey uses the archetype of the journey to explore something much more personal: the emotional aftermath of addiction, mental health struggles and complicated relationships, and the process of rediscovering a sense of self within that landscape. The result is an album that treats personal experience not as something separate from club music, but as material that can be transformed through it.
One of the album’s most compelling collaborations is “Oracle”, produced by Eden Samara with Tim Reaper and Comfort Zone. The track brings together Samara’s theatrical, celestial songwriting with a restless rhythmic language rooted in jungle, gospel and opera. The result is something difficult to place neatly in one category — perhaps exactly the point. The Guardian recently highlighted the track’s combination of jungle, gospel and opera, while DJ Mag described its break-led, vocal-driven character as part of Samara’s broader attempt to bring theatricality into the dancefloor.
Tim Reaper also returned to Oracle with a VIP remix, pushing the track further into what the original release describes as a full “bruk-out” zone while retaining its celestial pop core. Released through the first collaboration between London’s Local Action and Barcelona’s Lapsus Records, the remix was another chapter in the build-up to Odyssey.
For this special edition of Times & Tunes, Eden and Tim have also put together a joint playlist, offering a glimpse into the music that connects their respective worlds. We caught up with both artists to talk about Oracle, collaboration, songwriting and jungle, the role of theatricality on the dancefloor, and the musical paths that eventually brought them into the same room.
INTERVIEW
Eden, Odyssey is framed as a journey — part myth, part memoir — while the music itself moves through an unusually wide range of styles. When you first began working on the album, did you already know that it would need such a broad sonic palette?
Hello! Yes, I had a strong sense early on that moving through different genres would be an essential tool in conveying the story I wanted to tell on this album. But it also does tend to happen naturally in my work, because I both consume – and enjoy writing in – such a wide variety of musical styles.
The early demos I made for Odyssey quickly revealed a few directions we might head in. I did a session with Loraine James where we wrote both ‘Dorian Gray’ and ‘How to Let Go’ in the same day (Indie Rock and UKG.) I knew right away that those would be the closing tracks.
Tim, you have a very recognisable relationship with jungle and breakbeat music. What was it about Eden’s music that made you want to enter that world and work on Oracle?
I knew Eden through a mutual friend of ours (Marcus aka Comfort Zone.) She messaged me saying that she had started a track with Marcus for Odyssey and it could be cool for me to also be involved. We met up at my studio and continued to work on Oracle, and it seemed to all flow quite naturally.
Eden, your background in folk songwriting and theatre seems to remain present even when you’re working with very contemporary club producers. How important is that tension between the theatrical and the dancefloor in your music?
My past working in musical theatre is a fun thing to incorporate and does emerge every so often. It doesn’t need to be all jazz hands in the club haha, but I do enioy a bit of drama in songwriting. It’s a heightened state, like telling your friend a story and maybe you exaggerate some of the details to make it more interesting. The tension between the two is something I intentionally play into, but it’s down to personal taste to keep that feeling organic and not contrived. Marie Davidson is someone who I think does this really well in her work.
“Oracle” brings together jungle, gospel, opera and pop songwriting — quite a lot of musical languages in one track. How did the original collaboration between the three of you actually develop?
Oracle evolved more than any other track on the album, going through numerous changes and iterations. It started out as a purely instrumental idea that I had for a jungle track. I made a demo that had some 90’s pitched chords with sampled drums, and it had a voice note I recorded on my phone of someone talking over the beat.
I sent my idea to Marcus (Comfort Zone) who is an old friend from Canada, asking if he could redo the drums properly since he is an absolute ninja at chopping breaks.
Once he sent back some stems, I arranged them in the session and it was sounding pretty cool. Tim was on my list of people who I thought would be interesting to work with on the album, and because him and Marcus had already worked together on a few records it felt like the right time to reach out.
When Tim replied to my DM, the first thing he said was “I’m down to work on it, but you should get rid of the voice note.” So we did a session where the voice note got scrapped, and a footwork sub bass got added in along with more melodic elements. We passed the stems back over to Marcus again, who added new synth lines and a slap bassline that took things to the next level.
I didn’t intend to put vocals on it apart from some background ooo’s and ahhh’s, but the two of them convinced me to try it out. So the vocals actually were the very last thing we added, which is rare for me.
Tim, when you approached the VIP version, what did you feel the original track was asking for?
With the VIP version, I wanted to approach the track’s ideas & sounds without the overall context of it having to be included as part of the album listening experience, and could tailor it more for club use instead. So I stripped out most of the melodies, made the bass much more darker, the drums more harder hitting and took the focal point away from her main vocals and put it towards the energy of the instrumental.
Eden, what was it like hearing Tim’s version for the first time?Did it change the way you understood your own track, or did it bring out a side of “Oracle” that you’d already imagined while making it?
The brief was to make a more straightforward, DJ-friendly version. Tim sent me a first draft, and the break sections were killer but I felt it could use some lush pads and more of a melodic hook. I think we had to turn it in a day later, so I came over and we made a new version in maybe 2 hours? Tim works fast and it’s easy to agree on when something is finished.
There’s something interesting about the way Odyssey treats the dancefloor: the subject matter can be deeply personal, but the music often responds with movement, energy and even euphoria. Do you see dancing as part of the emotional processing of the album?
Club spaces have traditionally acted as safe places for me to mentally process, and physically move feelings through my body. So when shit happens I’m going to dance about it. I cry on the dance floor often, but it’s not in a bad way – it’s very healing and cathartic. I also enjoy finding a sense of humour in darkness, and think it’s interesting to write about the lighthearted side of that.
For example, the first track written for Odyssey was ‘Punish Me’, which acts as a commentary on patterns of codependency I observed in my romantic relationships. I wanted to find humour in that type of self-masochism in a song context.
The track ‘Mystery’ also turns saying goodbye to people and places we love into a celebration, based on the Japanese concept of ‘ichigo ichie’ or ‘one meeting, one opportunity.’ When I think of celebration – I think of house music, which for decades has captured both joy and the pain of oppression.
I suppose I do have a love of the “sad yet funny” bop because that’s how I tend to view life. Like my first instinct in uncomfortable situations is often to smile or laugh.
Tim, jungle has always had an ability to contain both intensity and emotion — frantic rhythm alongside something strangely beautiful or melancholic. What do you think makes that combination so enduring?
I feel like jungle is like a perfect example of music that can balance the rough with the smooth very naturally. The way you can have tracks with such lush melodies and soothing vocals, combined with tough 808 basslines and ultra chopped breakbeat drums, pitched up really fast. But it still somehow all sounds cohesive in the end, and not like it’s been completely mismatched or forced into co-existing alongside each other. I think the contrast between emotions in a jungle track can allow for tracks to have a somewhat level of multipurpose because certain elements can take the forefront when listened to at home or in a more relaxed setting, and other elements in that same track would take on the focus in a club/dancefloor setting.
Eden, Odyssey brings together an unusually large collaborative cast, from Loraine James and TSVI to Tim Reaper, Comfort Zone, Marysia Osu and others. How do you protect your own identity when so many different voices enter the process?
Collaborating on music feels like a part of my dna and is my favourite thing in the world to do. Just by contributing songwriting and production my identity is going to be part of the track, so that’s never a worry. But I will guide my collaborators if a certain sonic palette doesn’t quite fit in the world (if it’s for one of my own projects) and I’ll be vocal about my personal taste when we’re trying out ideas. And yeah it 100% expands my own ideas and sound, that’s part of the joy. I learn so much from working with other artists, and never want that to stop.
For this Times & Tunes, you’ve put together a playlist together. How did you approach choosing the tracks as a pair?
The playlist encapsulates where both our separate musical tastes align. We do actually have a surprising amount of common ground – within jungle and outside of it. We each picked half the tracks on the playlist and it was great fun to see what the other came up with. Tim was surprised I chose Appleblim, and I was surprised he chose a Facta track. Both bangers.
The idea of an “odyssey” implies that the journey changes the person who undertakes it. After finishing the album and revisiting “Oracle” through Tim’s remix, do you feel that the project has changed your relationship with your own music?
Eden: Finishing the album gave me a lot more confidence as a producer, so I’m excited to have more time to dive into production again. The Oracle remix has also received a positive response, Bicep played it recently and I really looked up to them as a youngster so that was a fun moment. I have a new EP coming out in the new year, and have basically been stockpiling tunes so that I never have such a long hiatus away from releasing again. Tim and I started working on a joint project last year that we’re aiming to finish this winter. Our friendship dynamic translates well to a work environment, challenging each other to write in other styles of music like footwork and baltimore club.
Tim: We’re working on more music together, of various styles/genres. It’s cool for me because I’ve never really worked in person with a vocalist before this. And because we’re now also making different styles, it’s given me the challenge of trying to build up a level of confidence in my production, when applied towards non-jungle based results.
Order Odyssey on bandcamp.
