Volcano Choir
Unmap

Justin Vernon is that tall blond guy who flows from the stereo into your home and, sneaking around, sits on your bed and, still wearing his burgundy hoodie, starts singing and filling the spaces. Then it might happen that he takes you by the hand, takes you for a walk in the woods, with those dull trees that make the winter, or hosts you in his father's cabin up north. He is Bon Iver, and all he can do is live the winter. It's also a matter of surroundings.

The feeling of getting lost, looking around worried that the noise you just heard was made by a wild boar, is bewilderment. Escape. Pure bewilderment. The feeling when looking at the buildings that escape from the trees of Hyde Park and that make up Bayswater Road is strange, with multiple facets. You feel distant, pleasantly apart, yet, at the same time, present. Absent just enough, but present just when needed. If Bon Iver sounds like a walk in the woods, the Volcano Choir is a drunk sitting on a bench, looking for the headlights of cars driving by beyond the park’s fence.

So, the Volcano Choir are Justin Vernon, better known as Bon Iver, assembling music with the Collections of Colonies of Bees. They assemble music, they don’t play it, and therein lies the sense of Unmap (2009, Jagjaguwar). Normal folk music destroyed and deconstructed until it loses its sense, then reassembled under the guidance of a choral falsetto that drags you far away. Don't expect music, don't expect Bon Iver, just an experiment. A successful experiment.

The beginning of "Husks and Shells" with those fragmented guitars, the beep of the metronome and the voice that enters sinuously is the best calling card for what Unmap contains. "Sleepymouth", almost seven minutes of held breath, for fear of ruining the atmosphere; how a waltz should sound to make not individuals, but hills, portions of the world with a bit of green still attached, dance. Something that ultimately is technologically bucolic psychedelia. Then there's time for melody, for a song - "Island, IS" - that evokes both the American tradition and My Bloody Valentine, in a powerful delicacy, a "Soon" painted in watercolors and "Cool Knowledge", which marks time with a clearing of the throat and the melody that makes you tap your foot, ends too soon, one leaves too soon and the amusements too end, always, too soon. With "Still" they pick up where Justin left off: a vocal game from Blood Bank (2008, Jagjaguwar) that here transforms into something that touches the majesty of the Sigur Ros that no longer exists, something that makes you vibrate.

It's a light, soft experiment. The most suitable word for the music of Volcano Choir is "soft", indeed. Soon it’s autumn, and Justin is there. We go around together.