Album Review : Volcano Choir – Unmap

It’d be all too easy to draw comparisons between Unmap and debut Bon Iver LP For Emma Forever Ago, but when all is considered, the two records couldn’t be further apart. While admittedly there are points at which Unmap becomes just an exercise in pairing the music of Collections Of Colonies Of Bees with the melodies of Bon Iver, credit has to go to Justin Vernon for adapting his vocals just enough to set them apart from his other work. They become more punctuated and more ecstatic, enhancing the crooked rhythms and studio treated sonorities that amass to Volcano Choir.

Interestingly, Unmap flits alternatively between metre-less ambient experiment, and more punctuated rhythmic pieces, a precedent set by openers ‘Husks And Shells’ and ‘Seeplymouth’. Compiled almost entirely from a single acoustic guitar sample, it’s the mixing desk that plays the most important role on ‘Husks And Shells’. The sample skips sporadically from one place to another, dynamically extending and withdrawing from sightlines, the occasional interjection of Vernon’s harmonies contributing a direction and purpose. The latter track is instantly recognised as more accented, yet no more obtrusive, with the song being constructed slowly over six minutes around a solitary repeated note. Drumbeats here, as with the majority of the record, are unassuming but engagingly skewed, taking a backseat enough to leave equal rhythmic responsibility to the other instrumentation, but at no point becoming deadweight.

If at some point during his oft-touted stay in his remote Wisconsin hideaway, Justin Vernon ever suffered a bout of cabin fever, ‘Mbira In The Morass’ is the track that documents it. It’s an unsettlingly haunting soundscape, where unidentifiable noises stab and twang contradictorily against one another, while Vernon’s unusually singular voice mumbles inaudible lyrics. Contrast this with ‘Dote’, which while similarly free form, evokes a completely different mood, and seems to carry spiritual, more religious inclinations, where Vernon sounds more meditated than traumatised.

“I’m up in the woods/I’m down on my mind/I’m building a still/To slow down the time”. It’s not often that just one moment of an entire album overshadows the rest, but ‘Still’ rises out of Unmap as the centrepiece that I’m sure will come to define the album. Evidently there are parts of the collaboration that outdate For Emma… so I’m unsure which version came first - but this is irrelevant. When put into the context of the penultimate track, the vocals from Vernon’s Blood Bank EP closer ‘Woods’ miraculously burst into life. Following almost three minutes of slow build, the minimal yet solid beat locks into place, while the heavy bass grounds the euphoric vocal harmonies. The anthemic conclusion constantly recycles, but never bores; in fact, the above lyrics comprise the entire song, but that doesn’t inhibit it from driving forward to a dramatic and resolute close.

Although there are parts of Unmap that definitely have more a feeling of a ‘Collections Of Colonies Of Bees, with guest vocals from…’ scenario, there are also parts of the collaboration where the two halves have clearly made a point of using the opportunity to explore the uncharted areas of their compositional capacities. Often, the artistry lies in their innate ability to retain interest and attention whilst reprocessing the same musical material - the exact thing that prevents this densely layered and beautiful record from going stale.