by Jason Hicks
Volcano Choir is the new band that represents a collaboration between Justin Vernon (a.k.a. Bon Iver) and Collections of Colonies of Bees. While I don't know much, or anything, about Collections of Colonies of Bees (other than opining that their name is quite unwieldy) the Bon Iver album, For Emma, Forever Ago is one of my favorites to come out of the neo-folk movement that has been gaining steam recently. While that album was about as minimal as it gets, mainly consisting of one man with an acoustic guitar and some tasteful vocal overdubs, the debut album Volcano Choir album, Unmap, is a different animal entirely.
While it still does have a folky quality to it, this album is definitely one that will sit nicely with others in the "experimental" bin of your local record shop. You know, that arbitrary section where you can find artists as disparate as John Zorn and Einsturzende Neubauten rubbing shoulders because the dudes behind the counter didn't know where else to file their albums. There's no shortage of oddball noises here, with electronic beeps and loops eerily floating in an out of the mix. Vocoder vocals, the analog precursor of the ubiquitous autotuned vocals, pop up on "Still" as they did on the Bon Iver album. However, against an ambient backdrop, the effect is far more artful than the clumsy attempts at futurism that are currently dominating the airwaves.
Some tracks like "Mbira in the Morass" are a little too left field for their own good, consisting of nothing more than haphazard piano chords, thumb harp notes and random noises paired with unintelligible vocals. At a scant 35 minutes the album can't really afford to accommodate throw aways such as this, but when it gets it right, like on the acoustic guitar and vocals with loops tone poem of "Husks and Shells", Unmap delivers impressionistic beauty like few other albums in recent memory. Elsewhere, Vernon sings over vocal and guitar loops on "Seeplymouth" and "Dote" respectively. Both seem fairly sparse on their surface, but upon closer listening reveal some subtle layers of vocals and sounds.
It's interesting that when the subgenre of "folktronica" first emerged in the late '90s/early '00s with artists like Four Tet and Manitoba, it was mainly electronic music with a few folky elements tossed in for color. Now with records like this, and the work of artists like Animal Collective and Akron/Family, we are seeing the reverse come into vogue, music that is rooted in the folk genre thematically, but employs electronic flourishes to fill things out.
Despite its experimental leanings, at its heart Unmap is about the beauty of the human voice, and to that end Vernon's soaring vocals serve it quite well. While overall the album does feel a bit slight, it is long on ambition and serves as a uniquely engaging listen. Seeing as how the two full length albums from Vernon so far have differed greatly, it will be interesting to see what direction his next project will take.
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