Megafaun

DeYarmond Edison was a roots-rock band hailing from Wisconsin. When they settled in North Carolina, Justin Vernon decided to return to Wisconsin and launch his solo project, Bon Iver. The rest of DeYarmond Edison (multi-instrumentalists, singers and songwriters Joe Westerlund, Brad Cook and Phil Cook) remained in North Carolina and started Megafaun that released Bury the Square (Table of the Elements, 2008) in an acid-folk vein, followed by Gather Form & Fly (2009), a more energetic and vital collection (to the point of being at times cacophonous) that contains the charming Solid Ground, The Fade and Kaufman's Ballad, as well as the convoluted Impressions of the Past and The Process.

The mini-album Heretofore (2010) contains the 12-minute psychedelic folk-jazz instrumental jam Comprovisation for Connor Pass (their artistic peak) and the no less eccentric seven-minute pop-jazz elegy Eagle.

Megafaun (2011) was instead a friendly work, perhaps their friendliest ever. The austere atmosphere shifted the focus from the hippies of the Sixties to the prog-rockers of the Seventies. For example, Isadora is a pastiche of mariachi and free-jazz located somewhere in between Frank Zappa's orchestral overtures and Lol Coxhill's "Welfare State". However, the jam Get Right was a far cry from their creative exploits of the past.

Appalachian Excitation (Northern Spy, 2013) was a collaboration between Arnold Dreyblatt and Megafaun.