Volcano Choir – Repave (2013)

Over a year after its well-received release in September 2009, a decision was made to adapt Unmap to live performance and to tour Japan. After which, it was clear that Volcano Choir existed as a fully formed entity, or as Justin Vernon succinctly puts it "those six shows told us everything about what we could be." There would be another record, but as with Unmap, there was no timeline. There were writing sessions that continued for years, sometimes within a couple of months of one another, sometimes within half of a year between November 2010 and March 2013. The drafty ideas were being sealed up, slowly. The way Volcano Choir like it. Suddenly there was Repave, set to be released via Jagjaguwar on 2 September 2013.


It's been four years since the first Volcano Choir album Unmap provided a glimpse into the collaborative mind set between a singer and the band that inspired him. Ideas were minted, written at a distance and realised in the studio; edges sanded back and flaps tucked in, the craftsmanship of the endeavour bearing evidence of the craft itself, and the technology used to assemble it. Unmap strove to find strands of life between the ones and zeroes - a carefully constructed narrative that lead the listener through its darkest passages like a tour guide leading their charges through a cave, with nothing but a slack length of rope and the senses of sound and touch. Just as importantly, it brought these people together, setting an expectation for themselves.
Unmap was a luscious experiment. It was written through the mail, pieced together over years of passing notes and audio from one end of Wisconsin to the other. It was written before Volcano Choir was a 'proper' band. A playground of sorts for friends to explore different musical ideas. There were no plans. No preconceptions. It all just happened, and suddenly there was an abundance of music, and a band was formed through the purest form.