About

– The Analog Vault // Essential Listening Album –

Bon Iver, Bon Iver was recorded and mixed at April Base Studios, a remodeled veterinarian's clinic located in rural Fall Creek, Wisconsin. The main recording space is constructed over a defunct indoor pool attached to the clinic. "It's an unique space and destination; it's our home out here," says Vernon, who purchased the structure with his brother in late 2008 with the sole intention of converting it into his ideal recording studio. "It's been a wonderful freedom, working in a place we built. It's also only three miles from the house I grew up in, and just ten minutes from the bar where my parents met." The creation of Bon Iver, Bon Iver was a three-year process, and Vernon says the completion of the studio paralleled the completion of the album. "I was writing and recording in the windows of time snatched between tours in support of For Emma," he says. "When I finally came home to hunker down for a solid stretch there was a feeling of solid ground and an opportunity for liberation waiting in the space for me."

In the absence of solid ground, the whirlwind becomes a whirlpool, and Bon Iver, Bon Iver is Justin Vernon returning to former haunts with a new spirit. The reprises are there “ solitude, quietude, hope and desperation compressed” but always a rhythm arises, a pulse vivified by gratitude and grace notes, some as bright as a bicycle bell. The winter, the legend, has faded to just that, and this is the new momentary present. The icicles have dropped, rising up again as grass.

 - Michael Perry | Source: Jagjaguwar

“The draw remains (Justin) Vernon’s raw-honey falsetto and mastery of voice processing; he uses ­Auto-Tune and other tools to amplify and embellish emotions, not just polish them, reimagining Peter Frampton's talk-boxing for iPod Touch-­toting college kids. Check "Wash" — a plea refracted through a kaleidoscope of effects, built around piano and wrapped in gorgeous strings. The approach, as (Kanye) West no doubt sensed, makes Vernon one of our era's defining singers.” – Rolling Stone

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