"The best metaphor that I can think of is that it's a platform that acts as like a garden, where creative seeds that you plant--with anyone you want to collaborate with--can grow. Where the emphasis is not on the finished, produced marketed product, but on process and showing a three dimensional context." Aaron Dessner, multi-instrumentalist for The National, may have been talking to Billboard about the P-E-O-P-L-E music streaming platform he created with Bon Iver's Justin Vernon, but he could have just as easily been talking about their joint musical venture, Big Red Machine.

The collaborative brain child of Vernon and Dessner invites us to be a fly on the wall of experimental creation. The meditative and repetitive songs developed during jam sessions in Berlin are part of the duo's push to break the status quo of the music industry. "Deep Green" flickers like a firefly, guitars and computer glitches sparking and snapping with light thru a droning piano and hummingbird quick drum machine. An organic and almost country song "I Won't Run From It" will bring Bon Iver fans back to the early days, with the left turn of Vernon singing in his low tenor without any computer enhancements. Balancing the sounds of The National and Bon Iver, "Gratitude" is an EP standout. It is one part prayer, one part meditation, it lulls and invigorates in equal measure.

It's rare look into the mind of two creative artists as they stretch and play with the boundaries others have created around their sound. But, with their Eaux Claires festival in Wisconsin, People festival in Germany, and the new music collaboration platform, expect more output from these artists as they welcome other artists to break free of the normal music business machinery.

Resources

Big Red Machine - Official Site