Justin Vernon

Four of the ten sit in earth signs and only one in fire, with three in air and two in water. Earth builds slowly and keeps what it makes, and almost nothing in this chart is in a hurry. Vernon recorded the first Bon Iver album alone in a cabin, which is the most literal version of that distribution a working life could produce: one person, one room, no audience, and as long as it takes.

Four planets group across twelve degrees of Taurus: the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars. Taurus is the sign of whatever is made by hand, at its own pace, and of holding on to what has been made. Identity, speech, taste and drive all in there means there is no part of him pulling towards speed or towards company. The Moon answers from Pisces, which dissolves rather than defines, and between them they describe the record as much as the man.

Mars stands at an awkward angle to Saturn three hundredths of a degree off exact, the tightest thing in it: drive against limit at effectively no distance, permanently unresolved. Five of them were running backwards at his birth, which is half the chart facing the other way, and for somebody who made his first record by withdrawing rather than by pushing outward that is the structural account of the method.

Jupiter shut its lap in Libra on 16 September 2016, at thirty five, moving backwards, which is how it began. Libra weighs one thing against another and will not shut either option down, and the planet of reach in it asks what was balanced rather than what was gained. Three circuits lie behind that date, and the cabin sits inside the second of them. What was made alone in that room has been worked on by a great many other people since, which is Libra getting its answer eventually.