Liner Notes: Volcano Choir, 'Unmap'

| Print Post This | Like (3) | Comments (0)

IF ONLY ALL accidents were this good.

Volcano Choir — a collaboration between Bon Iver mastermind Justin Vernon and fellow Wisconsinites Collections of Colonies of Bees (COCOB) — was never supposed to be a band. There was never supposed to be an album.

"I think it is by definition a record by accident because there was no idea to ever make a record," said the group's guitarist, Chris Rosenau.

As far back as 2005, Rosenau had been working on some tracks for a vocalist to sing on — a departure from the stark and experimental post-rock compositions of his band, COCOB. He didn't have anyone in mind for the music, but the group knew Vernon through mutual friends and had played shows together while Vernon was still in DeYarmond Edison.

"After we met Justin and kind of became friends, we realized we were interested in similar musical things, so one day we were like, 'Lets e-mail this shit to Justin and see what he thinks,'" Rosenau recalled.

Vernon shot back rough ideas for two songs Rosenau sent him and the band was blown away. The takes were so good that Vernon's vocals on "Mbira in the Morass" and "Husks and Shells" appear nearly unchanged on Volcano Choir's debut, "Unmap" (Jagjaguwar).

This all happened around the same time Vernon was assembling and finishing "For Emma, Forever Ago," Bon Iver's debut recording, an acoustic guitar-driven story of pain, love and loss that would go on to be beloved by the indie rock faithful and, eventually, more mainstream press, too.

As Vernon's stock soared, COCOB and Vernon continued to work on tracks together, e-mailing back and forth, and exchanging ideas through the Web.

"From there it was like this super no pressure situation," Rosenau said. "There was never any talk of a band, or Volcano Choir, just kind of a see what the other personnel would do with the idea that we'd put up there thing."

After a year or so passed, the collaboration had resulted in nine songs, and someone finally said, "Let's listen to this and see if it is anything."

COCOB then went to Vernon's home studio in Northern Wisconsin for a weekend last November to fill in the gaps and see if a record had emerged.

"Unmap," as it would be called, is full of Vernon's trademark falsetto, but it's set to more experimental musical passages. Several of the nine songs lack conventional structure, a result of the piece-by-piece construction.

Vernon's vocals appropriately take more chorale turns than they do in Bon Iver, with most songs feeding off a tension and release approach. Naturally, there's a strong pop sensibility too, with lead single "Islands IS" — built off a repeating Rosenau guitar motif — the most accessible.

"The intention isn't to scare people off with some of the more experimental stuff," Rosenau said. "All of us have been involved in experimental music. We know what the deal is. I think it's good to have that mix because I think it's good when people are challenged with new stuff to have a doorway to walk through."

Stream the whole album here and listen along while Rosenau takes Express on a track-by-track tour of this innovative project's debut release.

"Husks And Shells"
It's kind of familiar territory: me playing acoustic, and Justin singing. It is kind of this welcome that introduces you to some of the things you'll be hearing on the rest of the record. Literally the first time we talked about making the record Justin was like, "That has to be the first song."

"Seeplymouth"
That song in particular, the way that song originally ended, it's kind of a total appropriate example of the record-writing process. That song actually ended super peacefully until [drummer] Jon [Mueller] got his hands on it. You filter it through Justin's lens, my lens, [synthesizer and electronic specialist] Jim [Schoenecker's] lens, and we all hear something different. The greatest thing about this group of people is we trust each other — [with the attitude that] everything you do will blow me away. Jon blasted off into outer space and I was like, "Whoa this is way different then I imagined it," but I loved it.

"Island, IS"
It's actually really funny, that song barely made it onto the record. The whole record is so weird — the way everything ended up working out. That song, Tom Winceck, our Wurlitzer player, was experimenting with this micro-editing songwriting approach: taking these little edits of my guitar lines and micro-editing into their own little melodies. … He had been screwing around with this stuff and we heard it and didn't know what to do with it — it wasn't even Volcano Choir at this point. Everyone super dug it but no one knew where it belonged.

We actually brought the files with us that weekend, and [Justin had] heard it before and said, "I can totally work with this." We got there on a Friday night at 8 p.m. By 11 p.m., he had the whole thing written and record. It was ridiculous how it happened. ... That night after he got finished and we were taking stock we were like, "This is amazing, this has to go on the record." That was a song that definitely no one was looking for some pop aspect, it just kind of existed in outer space and ended up working out really well. I love that jam.

"Dote"
We really approached [the record] with the LP format in mind so that was kind of a way to bring it down a bit, but then it goes into "And Gather." Those two were written together. They're separate on the record, but we think of them as one thing. "Dote" is kind of an intro to "And Gather." It definitely is more sound-scapeish than anything else on the record. That's all based on Justin's choral stuff and a bunch of guitar loops, way more ambient guitar loops. It just kind of made sense there, thinking about side A and side B. Considering two sides of a record and how to best keep it moving.

"And Gather"
It was years of construction and deconstruction with that song. That actually started with a bunch of guitar stuff that I had done, and a bunch of it was good, and a bunch of it sucked. And this was years ago — 2006 to 2007 — that I was screwing around with it. We ended up editing it, and in the process of editing it all these different weird changes started happening. ... So we ended up getting this kind of structure with these kinds of repeating motifs. We gave it to Wincek and he took it to the woods and added handclaps and went crazy with it. He added the gospel stuff and now it rules. It's actually one of my favorite songs on the record because its so weird but so nice. It's just a song looking for an idea. And then Justin put those retarded vocals on it and everyone lost their mind.

"Mbira in the Morass"
It's a thumb piano [making the main melody]. That song probably spans the most, out of the Volcano Choir stuff, that was one of the original ones I wrote. My wife bought me a thumb piano and I wanted to screw around with it. People ended up putting all sorts of stuff on it. It's a creeper and it fits on the record in this polar opposite where "Islands IS," does. I think the chorus parts end up getting really pretty, but then your head jerks back into that super weird thumb piano part.

"Cool Knowledge"
I can sum up "Cool Knowledge" in a couple of sentences. We hadn't heard this song before that weekend. Justin had recorded all the vocals a couple of years before then. Jon was playing the drums and he started playing it and he said let's just record the drums and it becomes a song. It's so short it doesn't sound like it is poppy or should be, but I just get this stupid song stuck in my head all the time. That's all Justin — Jon just played drums on it.

"Still"
He had played us "Woods" a long time ago before "Blood Bank," [Bon Iver's 2008 EP, was a planned release]. We thought, "This is insane," a super-weird song. We all really loved it. The first time I ever heard it, I heard it as this total rock song. I heard these chord changes and I imagined it being really raucous and loud. We were screwing around with it when he was deciding about actually putting it on "Blood Bank." We said, "Go ahead, put it on there and we'll stop working with it." He said, "No, let's do both, that'll be the a capella version, you guys do whatever you want to do with it." I just started trying to impart a more rock thing. And then Jon came on and it was just a process of filling it in — going with Justin's vibe, getting more intense.

"Youlogy"
It's a similar kind of reflection on the rest of the record, like "Husks" opens the door on the record, this is a nice waving goodbye — you know where you've been, it's comfortable. That's another song where we had a whole other section to the song, everyone kind of liked it and there were problems with it. We were up at Justin's and someone just ended up starting it where it does on the record and we just started it from there, fixed the broken part, by cutting out the beginning. He had done those vocals a long time ago, the main vocal line, and he sat down and filled in all the end choir stuff.

Photos by Cameron Wittig