Big Red Machine
In 2008, Aaron sent Justin an instrumental sketch of a song called “Big Red Machine” for Dark Was The Night. This was before they had met in person. Justin wrote a song to it, interpreting the Big Red Machine title as a heart. 10 years of friendship later, there are 10 more songs. Big Red Machine. Each song includes a large number of collaborators via the PEOPLE platform and the record was produced by Justin and Aaron with longtime collaborator Brad Cook and engineered by Jonathan Low primarily at Aaron’s studio Long Pond in Upper Hudson Valley, NY.
The debut collaboration of Justin Vernon and Aaron Dessner is gorgeous and ponderous, a document of a creative process that feels a bit like watching someone get purposefully lost.
Wild Nothing returns to glorious form on Indigo, while Danny Brown and the Bruiser Brigade Reign Supreme on their Twitch-only stream, and jazz improvisers Szun Waves conjure a bright New Hymn To Freedom. Plus: the latest from Thou, Troye Sivan, Big Red Machine, and Muncie Girls.
Side projects like this often seem tossed off, but Big Red Machine feels like the opposite--something remarkably ambitious,…
PEOPLE is the name of an artist collective and web platform, co-founded by Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and The National’s Aaron Dessner
Though the seeds of Big Red Machine were planted in 2008, when the National's Aaron Dessner sent Bon Iver's Justin Vernon an instrumental song sketch of the same name, the project's self-titled debut was compiled over the two years leading up to its release in August of 2018.
Justin Vernon and Aaron Dessner’s album is no side project: it’s full of big-hearted songs and influenced by rap and R&B without appropriating either