Six emerging artists you need to hear: October 2025
When Public Possession released Eden Burns’ first EP, ‘Paws A Taieri Story’ (2020), he knew he was moving in the right direction. Five years on, the Melbourne-based, New Zealander has earned a reputation for balancing sturdy nightclub bangers with azure ambient bliss, while winning over dancefloors across Australasia, Asia, and Europe. Along the way, he’s dropped 10 volumes of his cult ‘Big Beat Manifesto’ 12” series and several collaborative EPs with fellow New Zealand Balearic beat aficionado, Christopher Tubbs.
Burns grew up between Dunedin and Christchurch, two South Island cities internationally associated with New Zealand’s jangly ’80s indie-pop scene and Flying Nun Records. Raised on synth-pop, new wave and post-punk in the mode of Gary Numan, The Human League, David Bowie, and the Cure, he began learning to play the drums aged six. Two years later, his father started answering ‘drummer wanted’ notices from local music stores, taking him to jam with middle-aged musicians in suburban garages. “He wouldn’t tell them beforehand,” Burns laughs. “When we arrived, he’d say, ‘Here’s your drummer!’” More often than not, they let him play.
Around the same time, Burns got his hands on Make Your Own Music, a no-frills music production program found on CD-ROM inside Kellogg’s cereal boxes in the mid-’00s. “That was my first introduction to moving loops around,” he says. By his teens, playing in bands had given way to producing beats for local rappers, and an interest in DJing ’90s dance music.
In 2016, Burns had a breakout moment in Sandboards, a deep house production/DJ duo he shared with fellow Dunedinite Tomas Krammer, leading to several 12” releases through Cold Tonic and Feel My Bicep, followed by touring Europe and living in Melbourne for the first time. “I was a bit too young and didn’t really know what I was doing,” he admits. In 2020, he returned to Dunedin, where he formulated his signature sound. Two years later, Burns spent a month DJing across Europe before returning the following year. Lately, he’s been preparing his debut album, ‘Eden Burns & The Makebelievers’, due through Public Possession in mid-October.
Partially inspired by the moment when a generation of Australian and New Zealand post-punk musicians, like Boxcar, Car Crash Set, and Headless Chickens, embraced dance music, ‘Eden Burns & The Makebelievers’ pays homage to Burns’ depth and breadth of musical engagement. The album began as tracks for vocalists. When those collaborations didn’t pan out, he realised they worked as instrumentals. Ostensibly dance music, the album’s dubby techno-pop rhythms are buoyed by a breezy melodic sensibility. Burns might be too young to have grown up in New Zealand’s Flying Nun era, but its slanted pop sensibilities still shine through. MARTYN PEPPERELL
For fans of: Kenji Takimi, Nice Girl, Alex Kassian
