Photo by Cameron Wittig

Volcano Choir, the union of instrumental rock group Collections of Colonies of Bees and indie-folk luminary Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), started simply from an electronic tape trading project.  But the band’s sound is far from plain -layers of light electronic tones, guitar, and percussion mixed with the intimate resonance of Vernon’s voice make Volcano Choir’s debut album, Unmap, a sonic masterpiece.  Eleven spoke with guitarist Chris Rosenau about the collaborative efforts in the creation of Unmap and how to come up with a good, fitting band name.

Volcano Choir – Island, IS

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You and the other members of Volcano Choir have had a history of playing music together. How does Unmap reflect that friendship and how has it shaped the evolution of the album’s sound?

Chris Rosenau:

We know Justin (Vernon) through touring together and playing shows with his old band, so we’ve been really good friends since 2005/06. We always hung out and played shows together whenever we could. The whole project has always been about having fun and challenging each other musically. We started in early 2007 when I had some song sketches in my head that I’d always wanted someone to sing on — they were really stark ideas, but I thought they’d be good for vocalists. We ended up sending them to Justin and he started working on them in this really interesting new way that we really hadn’t heard anyone do before— that was around the time he was getting For Emma together.  From then on, it was just a really fun electronic tape-trading project! No pressure, no goal. Just trying to blow each other away musically.

How did you come up with the name Volcano Choir?

CR:

For half the time we were working on this project, there wasn’t really any name. Last year we all agreed that we really had no idea what the hell we had. We’d been working on this for so long that everyone was getting very myopic on the song they were working on at the time, so we ended up taking a step back and getting together at Justin’s to look at what we’d actually come up with. As we were doing that, we really dug it and started arranging, adding stuff and editing. We eventually realized what we had was a real band. After that we were like, man we’re screwed because now we have to call it something! Over that weekend, we tossed names around and somehow ‘Volcano’ got caught up in the mix. And actually, a lot of the tracks Justin had sent us over the years had been titled something involving ‘choir.’  So John Miller (the drummer) suggested Volcano Choir a couple of days later and it was just instant — it resonated with everyone. We like it because it incorporates the ‘choir’ aspect, the whole process we went through, and also stemmed from that weekend of hanging out.  And maybe for no other reason than that we just thought it fit the music.

Both Justin Vernon’s work as Bon Iver and Collections of Colonies of Bees’ previous records seem to evoke the wintery, wooded landscape of Wisconsin. To what extent does being in Wisconsin influence your music? Do you feel your sound reflects or embodies the North Woods?

CR:

Yeah, maybe, there’s definitely an openness and warmth that people from Wisconsin have that I really like. The records are really open though, we weren’t trying to create anything in particular, but maybe living in Wisconsin has somehow ended up in there.

Aside from each other, what are your musical influences, and which contemporary artists do you think have the most impact on your sound?

CR:

The musical influences of the people in this band are just ridiculous — they span every genre and style of music throughout the past two centuries. Literally. I don’t want to name any names, but I think everyone definitely has their own influences that inform the way that they play, and then they can pick and choose what they want to bring to the table. It ends up being a really diverse record, but at the same time, it’s informed by some similar places — and while the influences between us are different, there are definitely some cross sections. It’s hard to pinpoint a style that we channel for the record, it’s all over the place.

What track on Unmap are you most proud of/excited about? Is there one track that you think “sums up” the album’s ideas?

CR:

I really think little aspects of all the songs are referenced in all the other works on the album. I guess maybe “Seeplymouth” is kind of the framework for the record because it runs the gambit from polar opposite ends of the spectrum, from the really quiet stuff to total blast off.  Even though there are elements of all the tracks in every song, I think that one might encompass everything the most. If you were going to play one song off that record as a litmus test or predictor, maybe that would be the one.

People are used to hearing Vernon’s voice as it sounds on the Bon Iver records, but on Unmap you experiment with lots of unusual vocal textures.  Do you think it might surprise listeners to hear Vernon’s voice with such a different sound?

CR:

We weren’t trying to do anything like Justin did on For Emma, but we also weren’t trying to avoid it.  It wasn’t really a conscious thing. He orchestrated a lot of it, but we have some guys who do some computer manipulation and stuff, and it was this organic process that just grew out of itself. I like that idea too, because it is unmistakably Justin singing, and people at this point are pretty familiar with what that is, but I like it for two different reasons: you can see how talented the guy is and see that he doesn’t pigeonhole himself into one thing. I also love it because people are familiar with his voice, and it gives them a kind of a doorway to get into the project. It gives them a point of reference to expand on as the record itself expands.

Collections of Colonies of Bees has collaborated with vocalists Davey Von Bohlen, and of course, Justin Vernon. Being a previously instrumental band, what’s it like for you to work with vocalists?

CR:

The way that it’s worked for us is that the addition of vocalists has always stemmed from people we’re friends with. Davey actually lives down the street from me, I can see his house right now — I’ve known him for like ten or twelve years.  In general, I think both of those guys have this quality about their voices and the way that they approach music that doesn’t necessarily fit that “singer in the band” thing. Both of their voices lends themselves to fitting in as an additional instrument, (though not to say it’s not just another instrument) but their attention to melody, rhythm, percussion and blending with everyone is unique. It’s not like, “here’s a verse, here’s a chorus.” Another thing you bring up that’s really interesting is that working with Justin specifically for this record was significant because a lot of people think that since we’re this instrumental band and Justin’s a singer, we wrote the music and he came in and sang it.  But a bunch of songs on that record started out just as vocals before any music was added — specifically “Seeplymouth” and “Still.” In both of those cases, especially “Seeplymouth,” since we got that in an email and it was a beautiful thing by itself — I didn’t even want to touch it — but at the same time, your brain starts cranking out ideas. It was a big challenge to approach song writing when you started with vocals. To his credit, there is a lot of rhythm and percussion already there, but it was a really different way to write —we had to develop motifs around his vocals. It made the songwriting process very innovative and challenging — it was great.

Do you have a favorite city and venue to play?

CR:

We actually met Justin at the House of Rock in Eau Claire, WI. So as Volcano Choir, that’s a really great place for us. We also like playing at the Cactus Club in Milwaukee.  It’s a bar that my wife’s aunt used to go to that was like this weird little dinner place people used to go to in the fifties. Then a friend of mine bought it in the early 90’s and it had this little tiny stage we used to play on all the time. Now it’s expanded and gotten a lot nicer, but it’s still one of my favorite places to play in Milwaukee.

How did you approach writing lyrics for Unmap? They’re not really abstract, but definitely tend to be more evocative rather than descriptive.  Are they more like departure points for the listener to interpret their own meaning?

CR:

Yeah, I think that’s exactly what it is. The way that Justin approached most everything—and actually, we all witnessed this, especially on the third track, “Island, IS” — this was one of the ones that was less fleshed out over the years between us.  We brought it to him to work with instead of vice versa.  On that one weekend last fall, Justin got there at maybe eight or nine o’clock, and started messing around with at 11, and was done with the whole thing at two o’clock. It was amazing to see him start the song with nothing but the melody and the percussive aspects and flesh it all out — the words just kind of started appearing. It’s stream of consciousness for him. I really like that. I think that’s why us working together turns out so well— he’s not like this rock lyricist or vocalist. Whatever words come out don’t make lyrical sense, but more importantly, they can be interpreted in a variety of ways depending where the listener is in their head. It doesn’t act as a rudder to guide you through the song. It just kind of “is” as part of the music, like any other instrument.

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