Mi Honda and Jordan McKenzie began Elfin Saddle after moving east across Canada from Vancouver Island to Montreal. Their take on acoustic folk is charged with myth, mysticism, anarchism, and a love of wilderness.
The alertness and drive of their luminous songs actually sounds electrified, but it’s not — they’ve prefigured a time in the post-apocalyptic future, after the machines of civilization have ground to a halt and the remaining humans will have to make their music without plugging in.
Elfin Saddle is the unusual union of a small Japanese woman, a Canadian woodsman, and a ramshackle pile of objects and instruments. With influences as diverse as outsider art, archival folk recordings, and anime, Emi Honda and Jordan McKenzie create a world of their own, inhabited by spirits, extreme weather, gods and goddesses, and other creatures of their respective imaginations.
Elfin Saddle | Running Sheep
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=U_bD7V2bLcE
They began working together as visual artists on the west coast of Canada, where they achieved high acclaim for a series of complex installations that involved live plants, motors, air organs, and a lot of found junk.
This led them to a similarly creative and collaborative foray in the world of sound. Though each had been writing music of many years previously, their combined approaches as Elfin Saddle has created something completely new.
Elfin Saddle | Hammer Song
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=b2X_kbZZGIg
On their debut album, Gigantic Mother / Wounded Child the instruments range from accordion to ukelele, to musical saw and jangly guitar, all glued together with an array of pulsing drums and tin cans.
The end result is a surprisingly melodic acoustic album that brings to mind aspects of Neutral Mil Hotel, Bjork, and Animal Collective, with a sense of arrangement reminiscent of early Krautrock and Brian Wilson. Singing in English and Japanese, the majestic scope of Elfin Saddle takes you to a hidden world that is completely imaginary, yet somehow relevant and strangely real.
Golden Diskó Ship | Live in Paris
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=rKNRLbEyRpM
Elfin Saddle are supported by the one girl band golden diskó ship. The Golden Diskó Ship brings you a mix of an original and personable guitar style, found objects, toy instruments, computer beats & sounds and layered vocals with selfmade video projections, drawing you into a unique, beautiful and immersive world of music and song.
Highly recommended by Digital in Berlin! We are giving away 2 x 2 tickets for this event. Just send a mail to win@digitalinberlin.de with “Elfin Saddle” as the subject.
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Elfin Saddle & Golden Diskó Ship LIVE
Wednesday, 30 May 2012 | 21:00 CET
.HBC | Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 9 | 10178 Berlin/Mitte
elfinsaddle.com | goldendiskoship.com | hbc-berlin.de
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