Blood Bank EP (10th Anniversary Edition)

Album review

Between his 2008 masterpiece, the global hit For Emma, Forever Ago, and 2011's eponymous Bon Iver, Justin Vernon was preparing to shed his old skin. Specifically, this 2009 transition EP, dubbed Blood Bank featuring bonus tracks from For Emma, Forever Ago (the opening Blood Bank and the very folksy Beach Baby ) as well as unexpected interludes of minimalist and repetitive music ( Babys with its whiff of the second coming of Philip Glass and Steve Reich). As for Wood, the fourth track that closes the EP, its use of autotune intrigued not only his long-time fans, but also a certain Kanye West who would sample it on Lost in the World on his album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy... To mark 10 years since its release, Blood Bank has been released in a deluxe edition with bonus, live, versions of the four tracks, recorded in Stockholm, Dallas, London and Paris. Vernon's thoroughly hallucinated and hallucinating spectral folk vignettes become small symphonies of cosmic and new age folk. Intense. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz