I Know A Garden

Edwin Raphael

On his latest record, *I Know a Garden*, Edwin Raphael tends to a dense and wild tapestry of dreams and memories. Lush chamber pop blossoms forth radiantly, rollingly, with the same kind of care and attention that sculpted the world's most enveloping recreations of Eden. The Montreal-based artist's early EPs and his world-building 2023 long-player *Warm Terracotta* found him exploring the shores of an island that had come to him in dream after dream. In the surrounding waters on *I Know a Garden*, Raphael begins his move inward, toward a green place at the centre of the island that holds both the roots of his life and the buds of possibility that grow from them. It's the kind of world within a world that provides fertile ground for an artist who recognizes the complexity of selfhood and the strange sweetness of being.