Search:radical redemption

22, A Million is a record of dualities. First released in 2016, Bon Iver's third album found Justin Vernon reckoning with pain and love, suffering and redemption, omens and happenstance. Such ambiguity is the core of how Justin composes words: there are always two ways to see something. Inside a fragmented language of symbols and numbers is a sonic distillation of past years of turbulence and how to recover. Across ten songs, 22, A Million shattered expectations of what a Bon Iver record could be. Through different groups of friends—close, passing, new, old—he began to assemble proto-melodies, vague textures and specific moods from hundreds of hours of recorded improvisations. Songs like “22 (OVER S--N),” “33 ‘GOD’,” “715 - CRΣΣKS” and “8 (circle)” traded familiar structures for fractured electronics, pitch-shifted vocals and dense layers of sound. What initially felt like a radical departure has since become one of the most influential and enduring works in Bon Iver’s catalog. 2026 marks the ten-year anniversary of 22, A Million. To celebrate,


Bon Iver and Jagjaguwar will release a deluxe anniversary edition pressed on Frosted Silver vinyl, featuring new alternative artwork with soft-touch finish and spot UV gloss detailing. The package will include the original 28-page lyric booklet, represented here in 3x silver inks, with an additional 12-page full-color inlay booklet documenting the album’s creative process through previously unseen artwork and an essay penned by Eric Timothy Carlson. The Brooklyn-based artist’s visual work has shaped the Bon Iver world since 22, A Million and his visual language has become inseparable from the album itself. A custom 12-panel ‘inverted cross’ CD edition will also be available.

Mario Batkovic’s music occupies a singular space between composition, performance and sonic experimentation.
Based in Bern, Switzerland, the composer, accordionist and multi-instrumentalist has developed an intensely personal musical language rooted in a radical interrogation of the accordion — its timbre, mechanics, physicality and rhythmic potential. In Batkovic’s hands, the instrument becomes something far beyond its conventional role: a source of intricate, evolving sound in which performer and machine appear to become one.
Batkovic received International critical acclaim when his eponymous debut album was released on Invada Records in 2017, with Rolling Stone listing it in the top 10 avant-garde albums of the year. ‘INTROSPECTIO’ followed, a self-questioning, self-examination of society which featured collaborations with Colin Stetson, James Holden and Clive Deamer (Radiohead / Portishead).
II sees Batkovic venture further into radical, uncompromising and experimental territory, both in the reduction and the expansion of sound. Voices overlap, rhythmic structures develop an almost mechanical force, and layers of sound evoke analogue synthesizers. Then everything falls away: near-total silence, the breath of the bellows, a single frequency. Sounds emerge that can barely be traced back to any particular instrument.
The album is built entirely around the physical relationship between one musician and one instrument. No loops, no electronic layers. Everything you hear comes from an uncompromising exploration of the instrument itself. A primal force of creation and destruction.
With credits that include music for the global hit game 'Red Dead Redemption II’, commissions for AMI Paris, Cartier Fondation, Hugo Boss, Chanel and film scores ‘Mad Heidi’ and ’Shame and Money’ his compositional work has extended into some of the most distinctive fields of contemporary culture.