Volcano Choir – Island, IS
Volcano Choir is a collaborative project arising from the long-standing friendship of Bon Iver‘s Justin Vernon and various members of experimental folk band Collections of Colonies of Bees.
Volcano Choir - Unmap
I stumbled across this on a mailout from THEMIXTAPE – a London-based mp3 blog and podcast I’ve been subscribed to for a fair while:
If I’m honest, when I first listened to this track, it threw me. I’m used to questioning, soul-searching, wistful where Bon Iver is concerned – music that literally causes my skin to tingle and my breath to catch just a little. It’s happening right now, listening to Bracket, WI (spotify link) and does so every time I hear The Wolves (Act I and II), Woods, or pretty much anything of his I can get my hands on. It didn’t happen with this song.
I think it’s because it wasn’t what I was expecting. Island, IS has a much more experimental feel to it – electronic and synth sounds fused with the almost etherial vocals – and the contribution of Collections of Colonies of Bees is clear, as it should be. Equal parts Justin Vernon, equal parts Bees and beautiful in its own right.
The track features on Volcano Choir’s first full-length album, Unmap, which was released late September on Jagjaguwar and is available to stream in full on spotify. The album also features a track called Still, a layered and intricate re-work of Woods from Bon Iver’s Blood Bank EP.
