Volcano Choir Gets a Release Date

The heavily rumored collaboration of Collections of Colonies of Bees and Justin Vernon, of Bon Iver fame, finally has a name and a release date. On September 22 Volcano Choir will release their debut album Unmap, through Jagjaguwar. Their collaboration goes back before the Bon Iver train came into town, when they toured together under Vernon’s former moniker The DeYarmond Edison Quartet.

Yesterday’s release has this to say about the sound and the recording process:

While entirely a studio record, the collection doesn’t suffer from a digital pile up or over-thinking. Rather, it breathes and convulses in equal measure, radiating an inherent dynamism found only in the voluntary bondage of intimacy. With influences ranging from David Sylvian and Steve Reich to Mahalia Jackson and Tom Waits, it might be more accurate to say the group’s influence is music itself. You can hear it in the care and real love generously applied to each moment of Unmap. With the vibe of some intimate backwoods gospel, plus a spirit of patience and thoughtful repetition, the music of Volcano Choir is as dynamic as it is lovely.

Unmap ultimately came together over a weekend in November 2008 in Fall Creek, Wisconsin, at Justin and brother Nate Vernon’s recording studio. And while it is at its heart a record about the allure of being with people you need and making something with them, it is also a document created by musicians with rare gifts getting together to exorcise their ideas about beauty. This scaffolding of loops and off grid tempos for choral style vocals offers a state of continual surprise, call it unexpectation.

High expectations, I have.

Track list:
1. Husks and Shells
2. Seeplymouth
3. Island, IS
4. Dote
5. And Gather
6. Mbira in the Morass
7. Cool Knowledge
8. Still
9. Youlogy