Collections of Colonies of Bees

Wisconsin's Pele (guitarist Chris Rosenau, bassist Scott Schoenbeck, drummer Jon Mueller and keyboardist Scott Beschta) had recorded Teaching the History of Teaching Geography (1998), Elephant (1999), without Beschta, The Nudes (2000), and Enemie (2002) before disbanding.

Chris Rosenau and Jon Mueller then started Collections of Colonies of Bees that initially, on the live in an abandoned warehouse MeYou (1998), was merely a bedroom experiment of lap steel and vocals. Rance (2000) contains 15 untitled pieces. fa.ce (a (2002) contains the eleven-minute Mu: Rder. The 22-minute piece of Meyou (2003) is emblematic of their cacophonous improvisations and Dadaistic singing. Customer (2004) incorporated digital musician Jon Minor and electronic keyboardist Jim Schoenecker, and the compositions became digital collages (unfortunately, faceless ones). The mini-album Birds (Table of the Elements, 2008) contains the four-movement suite Flocks, their most accomplished work. The 13-minute single Six Guitars (2008) is an avantgarde composition based on the musical interval known as the "perfect fifth", and performed by six guitarists, of which two also employ a looping device and an E-Bow, and two play rhythm with percussion hammers. The four-song EP Giving (2011), without Mueller, contains the nine-minute Vorms.

Collections of Colonies of Bees joined Bon Iver's Justin Vernon in Volcano Choir, which released Unmap (Jagjaguwar, 2009) and Repave (2013).

Throughout the life of Collections of Colonies of Bees, Jon Mueller had pursued several side projects: Pianobread (1999), Field Of Sound (2000), Castle Broadway (2000), and Raccoons (with Hal Rammel and Chris Rosenau), that released Raccoons (2000) and the double-disc Mother (2002). He began collaborating with jazz improvisers and avantgarde composers, for example Cutting Off The Edge Of Time (2001) with saxophonist Steve Nelson-Raney. He collaborated with Asmus Tietchens on 7 Stuecke (2003) and Acht Stuecke (2007), with Jason Kahn on the 18-minute piece of the EP Papercuts (2004), Supershells (2006), Topography (2008) and Phase (2010), with Z'ev on HYDratioN (2010), and with James Plotkin on the double-LP Terminal Velocity (2012). At the same time Mueller recorded his solo improvisations, for example: What's Lost Is Something Important - What's Found Is Something Not Revealed (2005) with the instructions to "play at maximum volume in a large empty room" (rather disappointing, however); the 17-minute single-sided EP Strung (2008), a much more intriguing abstract industrial soundscape; The Whole (2010), with the 14-minute Hearts, a sort of relentless (but also repetitive) pow-wow; Alphabet of Movements (2011), that contains one 20-minute piece for snare drum and the same 20-minute piece for small gongs (the cacophonic crescendo and detonation in the former is quite breathtaking); and Metals (2015), containing three hectic compositions for metallic objects.

Jon Mueller's multi-disciplinary project Death Blues is documented on Death Blues (2012), whose six songs sound like a slow-motion remix of early Sonic Youth, Here (2012), Non-fiction (2014) and Ensemble (2014).

Mueller upped the ante of his music for percussions on A Magnetic Center (2015), whose first side sets in motion a slow deterioration of Buddhist drumming and chanting, and Tongues (2016). The latter contains How You Look When You're Not Looking (15:12), in which chanting voices and drums create an intricate jungle of rhythm and polyphony, and What I Thought You Said (19:38), a frenzied tribal orgy that evokes primitive futures.

Mueller then released The House on the Borderland (2018), the soundtrack to a book, Clarity Cycles (2019), a collection of compositions for glass instruments, Codex Intueri (2019), a (not terribly exciting) collection of four rhythms arranged and mixed by James Plotkin, House Blessing (2019), an improvisation in four parts recorded in a chapel and focused on producing haunting drones, Family Secret (2021), whose Black Glass sounds like the infinitely droning echo of a monk's choir in interstellar space, the 37-minute dissonant chamber piece of Two Corridors (2021), performed by cellist Jeff Klatt and synth-man Jim Schoenecker, Afterlife Cartoons in the Buckland Museum (2022), an example of his solo acoustic percussion performances called "afterlife cartoons", etc.