BIO
Division Day songs, for which Rohner writes the lyrics, often feature strange creatures or bizarre characters, and lush, dense settings. "There's a host of natural phenomena in these songs," explains Rohner. "Bugs, jackals, snakes, trees, sparrows, crows, rivers, oceans, mud, fire, tar, blood. And then there's a human presence within this environment- paths moving through forest, sky, water."
Yet while these paths may widely diverge, there's an overall cohesion to the experience that makes Beartrap Island a time and place to return to again and again. "Hopefully a sense of place emerges from these elements," says Rohner, "and hopefully it speaks as much to psychoemotional topography as to external landscape.
At the time of their inception in 2001, they could at least agree on the essential greatness of Radiohead and Flaming Lips; however, it was only after the group went their separate ways to travel, study, and work various day jobs that things got interesting. When they got back together, they noticed that they had each followed their own muse to a distinct and sometimes mutually exclusive spot on the musical map, and subsequently, their dissimilar strands of curiosity began to come together in an evocative and memorable way.
Says Ryan, "Rohner had a lot of songs before I joined the band, so when we got together we were kind of like, `Well, let's turn some of these songs that Rohner made into full band songs.' But as we grew older and spent time apart, we all had time to marinate in our own personal interests, and then when we came back together, we were all into different music, and we've moved on from there.
"We've always had this joke," he adds: "Every time we get together to make some songs, it's like 'The New Division Day Recording: Not For Fans of Division Day,' 'cause it's always changing."
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