Chicago's Independent Music Review

by Jason Petros (09/16/09)

  With the advent of relatively cheap recording equipment, there has been a complete rebirth in how music is being recorded and distributed these days. Granted, this may be old news to some – but the DIY industry has come a long way since Fostex 8 track recorders – leading to a proliferation of loop based recording artists. Anybody can make music – but not everybody can make music well. You can buy a complete archive of drum sounds for ten dollars on a cd, and with the smallest bit of talent can lay down a guitar riff or piano sound over those stock drums, sing a melody, and voila, you have yourself an EP. Unfortunately, the relative ease of doing so has, in some ways, lead to the degradation of music as an art form; because for every Passion Pit, there are 35 other bands/individuals that don’t have the slightest clue about arrangement, holding the listener’s interest, the relationship of tension to release, or the importance of dynamics; and this doesn’t even get into EQ, or compression – or other production techniques that would fly under the newbie’s radar.

Hotel Eden understands the art of creating a song. Formerly of the Lab Rats, a Columbus, Ohio based beat production team, Kelly Warner has provided us with an interesting collection of songs complete with hip hop break beats, plinky piano lines and well thought out melodies. He’s a little bit of a throwback to DJ Shadow’s older days with an MPC, though not as gritty – evident in the head nodding beat which unfurls nicely in the first track, “Tell Me Where You’ve Been”. What makes Warner’s 5 song EP stand out above the rest of the fold is his attention to simplistic detail. Although working with loops, his moving songcraft keeps you interested in a number of ways – be it a slight change in the melody, a kick drum drop out, or a moving acoustic guitar loop. His handle of dynamics and the obvious foundation in hip hop beat production gives the music a foot hold in a number of different worlds without sounding too trite (Matthew Santos?) or too much like a just a background track. He has successfully invoked sentiment and urban credibility in this EP, and I applaud him for it.

“A Way Back Home”, presented by Solar Set Records, is not another electro-pop fake Postal Service album – this is a much more down to earth, urban, and cinematic pop soundscape with an appeal to people of all ages; steeped in the loop based history of music – but as interesting and intrinsic as a full blown band could be.

Fire Drill Review, 07/21/09

A Way Back Home is the promising debut EP from Columbus, Ohio's Hotel Eden which is really one man show Kelly Warner. The EP has several different styles that are driven from Warner's DJ days as he is not afraid to play with sound like in the groovy "The Take Home" or on the piano driven tracks he has a more orchestrated Ben Folds sound with layered harmonies. "Here" is one of the most upbeat tracks on the EP and Hotel Eden take on a very Beck vibe with fuzzed out bass line and muffled spacey vocals. It is this wizardry that makes Hotel Eden intriguing and A Way Back Home a very enjoyable listen. It definitely sets the stage to look forward to the full length!

Berkeley Place Blog, 06/04/09

 "The best thing about Hotel Eden’s debut EP, “A Way Back Home” is that it doesn’t really sound like anything else out there right now. It’s a crisp meld of pop electronica and “real” instruments, like crispy piano’s on “The Take-Home,” with pitch-perfect pop vocals. The songs are instantly familiar and intimate without being trite or cliché. This is one of the best EPs I’ve heard so far this year, and should be quickly added to your collection. You won’t regret it. On Solar Set records.

For fans of: The Stars, A.C. Newman, Peter, Bjorn & John, Feist."

 

 

Columbus Alive Feature, 05/09

by Chris Deville, photo: Will Shilling

original story

 When the Lab Rats disbanded two years ago, the hip-hop duo's musical mastermind Kelly Warner wasted no time conceiving a follow-up project. "There was a lot I wanted to say and do," Warner explained. "I wanted to dive in head first."Within months, Warner played his first show as Hotel Eden, a one-man band that nods to Warner's work with the Lab Rats while leaving hip-hop behind in favor of honest-to-God pop music. He wowed crowds immediately with performances that found him hopping from guitars to keyboards to turntables, orchestrating would-be hit singles on the fly. A Way Back Home, Hotel Eden's inaugural EP, drops this Saturday with a release party at Carabar.From the sentimental piano plinking of "Tell Me Where You've Been" to the rhythmic fuzz-bass romp "Here" to acoustic comedown "Never Go," the five songs capture the essence Warner was aiming for with Hotel Eden - a culmination of every social and musical experience he's accumulated over the years. Those experiences have been vast and varied. Born to touring musicians in Florida, Warner picked up drums at age three and soon moved on to piano. He was adopted by his aunt and uncle at age four and soaked up as much musical knowledge as he could from his adopted father, a lawyer whose tuneful dabblings left an impression on young Kelly. He fell in love with a progressively broader swath of styles as he worked his way north for college. After a stop at Georgia's Dalton State College and a stint doing radio at Ohio State's Lima campus, Warner settled down in Columbus. He made beats under the name Loop Doctor before pursuing his "first love" by forming the Lab Rats with Brian Brown.

A quick spin through A Way Back Home shows Warner wasn't kidding when he said his whole life was wrapped up in these songs. "The entire EP is designed to be very positive," he explained, filling in the title track's backstory as he remembered his first trip to the West Coast last year. The experience was invigorating, and upon returning to dreary Ohio weather, he hoped to recapture the sensations of sunny San Francisco.

 "There's always something amazing going on that you're not part of," Warner said. "Every once in a while I'll long to go back to the Pacific coast. So I kind of wanted to share that exciting energy."(KW note: I moved to SF pretty soon after this article was written)