Gateway To The Mysteries was the first full length album by Australian band Eden and introduced the group to a wider audience in Europe and North America upon its release in 1991.

Eden had been performing and refining the songs on Gateway To The Mysteries for over a year by the time recording began in May 1990. The song Elder and Earthern Flame, which had originally been recorded for the band's debut ep The Light Between Worlds was reworked for inclusion on Gateway To The Mysteries. With Sean Bowley on vocals and guitars, Ross Healy on bass guitar and Pieter Bourke on synthesizers, sampler and rhythm programming, Eden's music encapsulated a dynamic spectrum of colours and moods upon which Bowley's vocals and mystic themed lyrics would ride. Bourke and Bowley were also incorporating some exotic new instruments into Eden's sonic palette. Bowley started using ethnic string instruments such as the turkish saz and oud, whilst Bourke began to play the rebec (a medieval precursor to the violin) and the hammered dulcimer along with a growing collection of ethnic hand drums.

The recording of Eden's debut ep the previous year had ultimately been a frustrating and unrewarding experience for the band. In response they were determined to produce their next recordings themselves and began looking for a more suitable recording studio and engineer to work with. They discovered a local engineer named Adam Calaitzis who had begun operating a 12 track studio called Toyland Studios in the front room of his house. ‘As it turned out we most likely fell into the hands of the best possible option for us in Melbourne’, Bowley said. ‘Adam was a highly adaptive and inventive fledgling engineer. We were still a fledgling band. Working with a young engineer honing his craft worked well for us.’

Despite having limited recording experience themselves, the members of Eden had strong ideas about the sounds and textures that were critical to their music. Bourke explains that, ‘the band always put a high value on the sonic characteristics of our music and we had a strong interest in studio production.’ Eden's disappointment with their first experiences with professional studios, engineers and producers became a catalyst for getting more intimately involved in the music production and mixing process. ‘With the benefit of hindsight I now recognize this was a pivotal moment for us, both collectively and individually’, says Bourke.

Recording sessions for the new album progressed smoothly and swiftly, much to the band's satisfaction, and by September 1990 the recordings were finished and mixed.

In late 1990 the album was released in Australia on the band's own Elysium label, with distribution provided by Shock Records. In early 1991 a deal was signed for the release of the album with British independant record label Third Mind Records. The cd editions of Gateway To The Mysteries include five extra tracks that were previously only available on vinyl; four remastered songs from their 1989 ep The Light Between Worlds, plus Disenchanted Dream, the b-side from their 1990 Searching For Angels Hands 7" single. The inclusion of these extra tracks makes the cd version of Gateway To The Mysteries a complete document of the original phase of Eden's recorded output as a three piece group from 1989 to 1990.

‘Eden display a unique ability in manipulating sounds and textures from seemingly opposite ends of the musical spectrum.’ Alternative Press USA

‘Eden are a band that have managed to create a soundscape that completely escapes our modern culture.’ Melody Maker UK