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The plot thickens
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“We’ve always had certain aspects of the utopian in our work,” says musician Jordan McKenzie, with Emi Honda the core of Montreal’s Elfin Saddle. He’s referring to the intensely organic—as in, full of live, green flora—nature of their art installations, primarily Honda’s domain. But the utopianism communicated by these miniature, mashed-up realms of plant life and found objects is echoed in their music, a sort of patchwork meta-folk resonant with both remote mysticism and plainspoken, handcrafted honesty. The pair’s pocket-sized paradise, however, seems besieged these days, something one can hear in the hints of urgency and foreboding across their recent Constellation album, Ringing for the Begin Again. “A few years back, I was more optimistic,” says Honda, “wanting to give happier messages, that as a human you’re part of nature, so coexist. But now, looking at the way we are, it seems like, really, it’s not what we’re trying to do. So I think our message became scarier.” “I think we’ve become more impassioned about making a point,” adds McKenzie, and it’s a point that has become more precise since the duo relocated to Montreal from Victoria, B.C., four years ago, dropping the moniker Sound Stories in favour of Elfin Saddle. “The big difference is, we were doing visual arts back then too,” says Honda, “but we didn’t connect them to music. When we came to Montreal, our themes became clearer—the music’s themes stepped into the visual art’s themes, let’s say. Now we’re more comfortable with those aspects together.” Together, the art and music invoke an active social and environmental engagement, though not to the extent of eco-hectoring. Elfin Saddle’s most thorough fusion of sight and sound is Wurld, a 25-minute time-lapse film they’re premiering at the MAC’s Nocturnes night this Friday, alongside a new installation and a live performance to accompany footage thereof. “The original idea,” says Honda, “was more like, make this sculpture installation and then help the plants grow over it so they can decay and go back to the ground together.” The final film, however, is the opposite of that. To the strains of a stirring Elfin Saddle score, it’s a gorgeous, haunting look at the transition of an idyllic wilderness gradually supplanted by civilization. The whole thing, concocted out of living plants and repurposed junk (“scavenging, yeah, it’s kind of an artform we’ve perfected over the years,” notes McKenzie), was created over many months in one tiny plot of dirt. “It was a reclamation,” says McKenzie. “The area that we shot it in, the backyard of the apartment we were renting, was covered in garbage when we found it. We had to clear it out and revitalize the soil.” Honda doubts they could have summoned the same intentions back out in verdant Victoria. “Montreal’s contaminated soil and shady backyard corners are more meaningful, in a way. We wanted to show people that it’s possible.” In scoring a film, they’ve also shown themselves what’s possible for their music. “It forced us to have to fit into this mould that already existed,” says McKenzie, to which Honda adds, “Elfin Saddle’s set was more like song, song, song before, but the idea of the soundtrack, always moving into another scene, affected our live set, making it more connected.” AT THE MUSÉE D’ART CONTEMPORAIN |
