The composer-astroscientist duo that are cloudbusting in mythical, eclectic style.
IN HINDUISM, ADEVA (pronounced dayva) is a god; someone supernatural who shines and is literally dev-ine.
Add extreme weather, and emotion, and there’s a substantial concept manifesting. So when Leeds-via-Hertfordshire composer, vocalist and pianist Carollyn Eden chose this name for her work she was thinking big. Bigger than big. Celestial, magical… as large as the heavens and Earth. Which was serendipitous, as the noted astrophysicist (and progressiveminded rock guitarist) Dr Stuart Clark was soon pulled into her, ahem, orbit.
After a chance conversation at a tube station, Eden was invited to perform at an interactive science-theatre event in 2012 called Enlightenment Café. It took place in the Old Vic tunnels at Waterloo, where Clark was a Master Of Ceremonies amid a number of scientists taking part.
“We started talking about music there and stayed in touch,” Clark tells Prog.“Much later, Carollyn played me some piano music and I immediately recognised it as rock songs waiting to happen. There was a depth of musicality and super-strong melodies; it was everything I liked about progressive music.”
Eden’s influences had included rock, but she adored “All About Eve, Watermark by Enya, and Iona,” she says. “I’d listened to Journey To The Morn so many times, this is where I was heading.”
However, when in her 20s, the band assembled around her didn’t fit:“There was soul and pop, and a saxophone!” Eden craved folk and celtic rock flavours but wasn’t connected to that world.“I was longing for that, so, years later, this was the perfect meeting with Stu,”she says with a nod.
That said, the Storm didn’t rage for an age.
“We were trying to find our soundscape,” says Clark. “Carollyn’s demos were so fully formed that anything you do diminishes what’s already there…”
“But I kept saying,‘More rock!’And I’d come up with guitar riffs,” laughs Eden.
Writing and arranging together, and becoming a romantic partnership, led to
