Elfin Saddle
(Constellation)
The members of Elfin Saddle, out of Montreal, are as much concerned with the visual and performing arts as with music. On the one hand, the band's founders Emi Honda and Jordan McKenzie (with help from Nathan Gage of Shapes and Sizes on bass and tuba, Nicholas Scribner and Kristina Koropecki), compose delicate reveries of folk-banjo, accordion and polyrhythmic percussion that fall easily into line with fellow Constellation artists Godspeed! You Black Emperor. On the other, they construct equally intricate sculptures and installations, little universes teeming with tiny representations of animal and plant life. The Wurld project combines these complementary arts in a variety of ways.
At its heart is the Wurld film, a 23-minute meditation on biological growth and civilization. Over the course of the film, a barren patch of dirt sprouts ferns and plant life, first, then a variety of rustic manufactured structures. The piece is filmed in stop motion, so that not only the living things (a snail, the plants, some furry, weasel-ish creatures) seem to move, but also windmills, houses and fanciful wooden implements. Technology develops as you watch the piece, first in primitive wooden structures, then metal and fire. By the end, the natural elements of the sculpture are nearly crowded out with small plastic items. There is a growing sense of decay and dissolution, and the piece ends, fittingly enough with static on a blank television screen. The whole biosphere, if that's what it is, seems intricately interconnected and infinitely complex, and finally pushed over the edge by the relentless force of development. The music which accompanies the film is, likewise, playful, organically rooted, and rhythmically propulsive at first, but gradually taken over by the hiss and clatter of mechanical sounds.
In addition to the Wurld film, the DVD also includes footage from a live performance at Montreal's Contemporary Art Museum, where Honda and McKenzie and Gage perform in front of an ever shifting background of filmed sculpture. There are also audio files for the Wurld soundtrack, included in both .WAV and .MP3 format, and some shorter films that provide closer views of Honda's art installations. The packaging for all these components is quite beautiful, and includes, tucked away in a pocket, some postcard-sized photos of the Wurld installation.
A work like Wurld is hard to judge by ordinary "Is this a good record or not?" standards, since the music is only one piece of the package and makes sense mainly in the context of the visual and performance elements. Still, even on headphones, the three audio tracks are hauntingly beautiful, particularly the final "Tree in Dark Water/Sinking Celebration", with its unearthly vocals and sad, stately banjo picking. You could certainly think of your own pictures for these songs - or simply imagine Honda, delicate and pale, lifting her head over her accordion, to sing it. Still the fact that there's a whole universe living around these songs, imagined in detail and constructed with care, makes them even better. This Wurld is definitely worth exploring.
DOWNLOAD: "Tree in Dark Water/Sinking Celebration" JENNIFER KELLY
