This past week, we sat down for a brief discussion with the prolific Virgil and Lauren Lenoire, to talk about their latest musical entity Wooddoom, whose first album Blight was recently released on Calgary's Mongolbord Surfingturd label, as well as Temple Lantern Caravel and The Amphibious Unity Choir and Eight-Hundred Salamanders Handcalp Band.

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Between the two of you have been involved in a large number of bands over the years, do you find yourself constantly looking to the horizon for new musical areas to explore?

Virgil: To an extent, yes, but the truth is, I don’t think I’ve strayed too far from where I started. When I was younger, I was involved in a few local bands, just messing around really. It wasn’t until I met Lauren that I found the confidence to really bring out the true music I had within me. Before that it was very much an external process for me, just rocking out, but as time has progressed, I’ve moved towards a more internal source.

Lauren: Really, I think the differentiating factor in each musical endeavour is its creative origin. For me, I always have some specific intent with any creative project, and should the intent arrive fully-formed and strong, it’s hard to ignore that.

Virgil: Exactly, and if you do ignore that impulse for creation, it often stays with you like a stone in your heart. Better to excise it.


You were both members of the well-loved Amphibious Unity Choir and Eight-Hundred Salamanders Handclap Band. That band has been on hiatus for several years. Is this project something you think you will ever revisit in the future?

Virgil: Well, never say never, but the real problem with that band is that we had so many members, so many different instruments, that it was difficult getting enough time out of everyone’s lives to really focus on that project like it deserved. As we’ve grown older and built families, it became harder to stay committed to the group. But the music we made together was something special, and I number many of that groups members amongst my closest friends. Maybe one day.


Since that group’s hiatus, you have focussed on projects together. Was this born out of the simplified logistics involved with a smaller creative unit?

Virgil: Yes. The great advantage of working with Lauren, aside from the inspiration I draw from her on a daily basis, is that it’s practical. We can work on projects together, at home, without much hassle, and it’s much easier to tour together than with a larger group. I’m also really happy that together we form a single unique musical identity that is greater than the sum of our own musicality.

Lauren: It just makes the most sense. I think the way we relate to each other, and understand each other creatively, it allows us to escape our own inhibitions. Our creative processes are different, but they overlap and intertwine in a way that it would be hard to separate at this point.





Temple Lantern Caravel seemed initially to follow on from the Amphibious Unity Choir, almost a continuation, but over time it has drifted in its own unique direction. Is this intentional?

Virgil: When we started Temple Lantern Caravel, it was initially a touring project allowing us to perform a subset of the Amphibious Unity Choir repertoire without the horrific logistical issues that entailed with the full group. We made a conscious decision to continue to explore that stripped-down sound, because we found something really effective in it, that we often missed when working on larger arrangements. If it comes down to it, Temple Lantern Caravel can perform with just guitar and piano - though we do like to use a wider range of instrumentation where possible, it’s just that with just the two of us we’re able to cope with less-than-ideal situations much better than we ever have been before.

Lauren: I think the path Temple Lantern Caravel has taken has surprised us. We gradually began to explore a more sorrowful and contemplative sound, I think as a reflection of the space afforded by the largely acoustic instrumentation..





You have recently began a new project in what many fans consider an unexpected direction. There seems to be aspects of black metal and dark ambient at work. Could you explain a little about the origins of Wooddoom?

Virgil: Wooddoom was born out of a fairly specific musical desire. I began working on some pieces on electric guitar while Lauren was out of town, and I had started moving towards a fairly cavernous sound where there was not much room for other instruments. It wasn’t really going anywhere for a while, until Lauren returned together we hit upon the idea of using this as a textural element in a wider tapestry of sound. We really began working on it in earnest during the recording of the latest Temple Lantern Caravel record.

Lauren: Black metal comes with a notoriously narrow set of musical parameters, and we’re not really interested in that aspect of it. We prefer the contemporary examples of the genre, that blend a wider range of influences. We use that aesthetic as one element in a larger framework.

Virgil: We draw a lot from nature, as we done in Temple Lantern Caravel. But where Temple Lantern Caravel generally represents the renewal of life, Wooddoom represents the renewal of death. They’re different aspects of the same cycle really, but they do overlap. One feeds the other.

Lauren: There’s a western perception that darkness is evil and light is good, but it’s easy enough for us to make the opposite assertion. In truth, both are necessary, both are part of all of us. Temple Lantern Caravel has definitely explored areas of thematic darkness before, but not for such a sustained period as this. Similarly Wooddoom is not exclusively about the darkness.

Virgil: Wooddoom is really about the texture and feel more than Temple Lantern Caravel.


How do your creative processes differ between Wooddoom and Temple Lantern Caravel?

Virgil: Surprisingly little.

Lauren: It’s not so much the process that differs, as it is the ideas at the root and at the core of each project. Both start in very different places, but take similar paths. Both are usually through-composed.

Virgil: For Temple Lantern Caravel, we tend to score the parts out together, and it’s very much about the interplay between the various stringed instruments. With Wooddoom we generally begin with a specific tone or sound in mind, and from there it’s a process of addition and subtraction. It’s more intuitive than Temple Lantern Caravel.

Lauren: We’re working more with the properties of the sounds themselves.








You mentioned the duality between Temple Lantern Caravel and Wooddoom. In that light, the last Temple Lantern Caravel album “Pass Into Night” seems almost to be leading directly into the Wooddoom debut "Blight".

Lauren: In some ways it is.

Virgil: Pass Into Night has a very specific narrative story to it, one that [the first Wooddoom record] Blight does not continue. But you are right, because they were both largely recorded at the same time, there is a thematic overlap.

Lauren: Actually, it’s funny. During recording, we tended to record Wooddoom during the daylight hours, and work on Temple Lantern Caravel through the night. We needed to capture a lot of sounds at dawn and dusk for Pass Into Night, and some of that bled over into Wooddoom.


There also appear to be certain parallels in the use of mythology and storytelling in the music.

Virgil: As musicians, we are really storytellers of a sort. It’s not always a literal story, or even one that uses words, but there’s always an arc involved in everything we do.

Lauren: Part of the joy in Wooddoom’s execution for me has been re-interpreting some of the familiar imagery we’ve been exploring since the Amphibious Unity Choir. Specifically, the idea of the temple, a place of devotion to something greater than oneself. In Wooddoom we explore the exclusionary aspect of this idea, the sometimes violent historical conflict amongst the religious.

Virgil: There’s another piece we’ve been working on for a future release that follows directly on from an old Amphibious Unity Choir piece, very much a dark reflection of that.


Is it ever difficult drawing the line between your personal relationship together, and your collaborative musical relationship?

Lauren: Yes! It is sometimes a struggle, absolutely, because we’re so invested in our creative processes at times that we have to appreciate that we’re often not in exactly the same personal space as one another all the time. But you have to remember, we began as a creative partnership before there was ever any romantic relationship between us. So in a sense, our love grew out of that partnership and the two are pretty much inseparable.

Virgil: In a way it’s not that different than collaborating with a friend, except that we really do spend most of our time together. But I think we’ve gotten pretty good at drawing a line and disengaging from that creative mode to engage in a normal life together.


What can we expect moving forward? Is Wooddoom now the focus?

Virgil: No, I think in future we’re going to keep exploring the duality of the two projects, the differences and the similarities. In many ways I think devoting energy to Wooddoom, will push Temple Lantern Caravel in some more interesting directions.

Lauren: Wooddoom goes to some pretty intense places, but we don’t really want to limit ourselves to any one specific style or project. Who knows, maybe we’ll be working on something completely different in the future.

Edited by user 12 April 2012 02:45:39(UTC)  | Reason: I keep writing "Woooddoom" instead of "Wooddoom", silly me.