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7:46 · 1,125 words of transcript · watch on YouTube
- The claim is causal rather than stylistic: the third Bon Iver album would not exist without Kanye West.
▶ 00:00:45
- The connection starts with a track of Vernon's own vocals soaked in autotune, inspired by 808s & Heartbreak the year before.
▶ 00:01:06
- The difference from other autotune of the era is purpose. On that record the effect strips individuality out of the voice, which is what made it useful to Vernon as somewhere to hide vulnerability.
▶ 00:01:29
- West liked that track enough to sample it on his own next album, which is how the working relationship started.
▶ 00:01:48
- After the second album Vernon needed to step back for his mental health and went to the Greek islands alone, and did not find what he was looking for there.
▶ 00:02:11
- What restarted him was West talking about self-perception, that people are slowed by how they see themselves, and Vernon has credited that with helping him finish the record.
▶ 00:02:28
- The Prismizer, built by Francis Starlite, splits a lead vocal into multiple harmonies like light through a prism and maps them to a keyboard.
▶ 00:02:46
- It could only be applied after recording, so Vernon and engineer Chris Messina built hardware and software to generate the effect live, which they named the Messina.
▶ 00:03:28
- The album opens with a loop of his own voice running the whole track, layering and pitch-shifting before his natural voice appears, with no instrument other than voice for nearly a minute.
▶ 00:04:50
- The tension the video identifies is the interesting part: heavy emotional material delivered through a tool designed to correct faults, with the voice audibly pushing against the processing.
▶ 00:06:44