In 2019, Israeli pianist Eden Ladin found himself at a crossroads. In the midst of the greatest success of his career, he was at a low point in his personal life.

“I needed to heal,” Ladin shares. “That’s when I started writing these little melodies at the piano. And they helped me.” 

Soon, Ladin found himself with over a hundred small tunes, snippets heavy on nostalgia, recalling TV themes, computer games, and lullabies from his youth in Israel. In early 2020, coronavirus brought him back home to Tel Aviv after thirteen long years in New York, back to old friends and family, and into the recording studio.

Out of this confluence of events came Mirage, Ladin’s playful, introspective sophomore LP due November 11. Incorporating an array of analog synthesizers and a healthy dose of progressive rock instrumentation, Ladin expands upon his 2017 debut Yequm, departing further from conventional, straight-ahead jazz wisdom. He’s still the pianist with New York bonafides and club dates at the Vanguard, now making music more on his terms than ever before.  

Mirage plays like a trickster — unpredictable, dancing between moments of childlike wonder and darkness. “So Long, Comrade” would fit right into the soundtrack of an Israeli Western, the background music to a cowboy tipping his hat and riding off into the Negev sunset. “What if all’s just a dream,” the pianist muses, singing through a vocoder on “At the Mall,” a song which he describes as being about “everything and nothing.” “The Mischievous Artium” was inspired in part by the squeaks of the G train in Brooklyn. “Underwater Journey” and “Low Gravity” sound as otherworldly as their names suggest. 

Just like his compositions, Ladin’s instrumentation is delightfully idiosyncratic. The pianist rolls out a dozen analog synthesizers for Mirage; they sit alongside a one-octave, battery powered toy Casio, and a repaired, coffee-damaged keyboard from the 80s, gifted from his father. Moving from one voice to the next, Ladin gives shape to his compositions, guiding us, tickling us, surprising us. 

If Mirage attempts to bring you a smile, it also aims to make you feel a pang of sadness. “The record leaves you with this unanswered question,” says Ladin. It’s music, after all, that grew out of healing, more process than solution. Ladin takes on thorny problems, admits vulnerability, and has the courage to say, at the end, that he’s in a better place, still seeking, ever on the path of discovery. 

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