Background and beginnings Jesse Cooper started making
mixtapes under the
moniker "Jay Fresh" on the weekends. In the beginning Cooper mostly made
hip hop mixes with his friends, one of which was Harley Rayner, the son of former
Split Enz keyboardist
Eddie Rayner. In 2008, Cooper decided to make
dubstep music after he heard Electronic musicians
Benga and
Skream, at the New Zealand music festivals Phat09 and Splore, saying that he had his "mind blown" by the young genre. He also started making
drum and bass music around the same time, which was inspired by the Front Left Speaker Crew and Joe Hockley. One of the first songs Mt Eden made public was "Sierra Leone", a remix of
Freshlyground's "I'd Like", which he uploaded and posted on his
Myspace page, however the song gained major recognition after a fan posted the track on
YouTube. That was when Cooper decided to release music under the
pseudonym "Mt Eden Dubstep", later changing his name to simply "Mt Eden" in 2010, when Cooper recruited Rayner. Mt Eden released their first
extended play (EP)
MEDS for digital download on 7 December 2010. It has got mostly positive reviews by customers on
iTunes. On 16 February 2013, Mt Eden announced upcoming releases in a post on their
Facebook page, writing: "[...] Our Sierra Leone Remix package (Sierra Leone Reinvented + Remixes, Sierra Leone music video) is coming in April. The first single off
No Mans Land is "Airwalker", to be released late April/early May, with the full
Walking on Air EP out in late May.
No Mans Land LP will [drop] in June." The EP
Sierra Leone (feat. Freshlyground) [Remixes] was released on 30 April 2013, with a completely re-made version of their original "Sierra Leone" and three remixes of the same song by Ta-ku,
AraabMuzik and
Tommie Sunshine with Live City (in 2017, two more remixes followed, by TWO OWLS and Ian Munro respectively). The duo's
Walking on Air EP was released in June 2013, featuring seven songs, by Ultra Records Label. ==References==