Songs of the Gobi meet new sounds

Indie musician Eder grew up between two worlds, though he didn't realize it at the time.

One was Hohhot, the bustling capital of North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, where life moved in familiar urban rhythms.

The other was Ereenhot, a border town on the China-Mongolia frontier where his grandmother lived. It was there, during long summer and winter vacations, that he first encountered the vastness that would later define his music.

The nearby Gobi Desert landscapes of Ereenhot were not beautiful in a postcard sense. It was flat, dry and harsh. The horizon seemed to slice the sky from the earth. There was little vegetation — only wind, stone and a silence so complete it felt almost physical.

But to young Eder, it was something else entirely.

"It felt tough," Eder recalls. "Not a place of abundance, but of survival. Animals, plants, even insects — they all felt strong because they had to be."

In the Gobi, he and his cousin, both under 10, would disappear into the open land for entire days. There were no adults, no supervision, no schedules, and no destination. They watched clouds move across the sky like slow cinema, chased lizards and grasshoppers, and spotted camels, Mongolian gazelles and eagles riding the wind above them.

Nothing ever felt dull. Time simply slipped away. Back in the city, however, everything felt different.

That contrast — between vast silence and the bustle of urban life — quietly shaped his inner world long before he became a musician.

His grandmother passed away when he was in middle school, and the trips to Ereenhot stopped. The Gobi became a memory rather than a place. But it never left him.