Elfin Saddle – Wurld - Constellation

Packaging Notes

DVD comes in a custom screen-printed 25 pt. chipboard gatefold jacket with front cover die-cut window and DVD inserted in a printed sleeve. Contains a 5"x7" full-colour title/credit insert and a set of three full-colour 5"x7" postcards featuring stills from the Wurld film (each of which can be positioned to shine through the window cut) printed on 80C Proterra Oyster paper. Also includes a 7"x14" duotone poster printed in burgundy and semi-opaque green metallic inks on Proterra Kraft paper featuring original artwork by Emi and Jordan All boards and papers are 100% recycled. Limited to 900 hand-numbered copies.

10" vinyl package is similarly screen-printed and die-cut on the same thick chipboard, with a 10"x10" full colour insert card, the 5"x7" postcard set, and a larger 10"x20" duotone art print poster. All materials printed as per the DVD specs above. The 10" package includes the DVD in its printed sleeve, inserted in the vinyl jacket. Limited to 500 hand-numbered copies (now sold out).

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Tracklist

VIDEO CONTENTS:
1. Wurld film (23:20)
2. Elfin Saddle in concert at MACM (46:18)
3. Wurld outtakes (4:52)
4. Rotating Sculpture (5:03) (video for "A Sinking Celebration")
5. Flora & Fauna art installation video document (7:10)

AUDIO CONTENTS:
1. Wurld Soundtrack (15:41)
2. A River Of Horses (5:17)
3. A Tree In Dark Water / A Sinking Celebration (8:13)

Running time: 00:31:35

Packaging Notes

Description

Elfin Saddle began working with Constellation in late 2008 when the label invited the group to record a new album at the Hotel2Tango studio in Montreal. The resulting Ringing For The Begin Again (CST059) appeared in spring 2009. At the same time, the band's co-founders, Emi Honda and Jordan McKenzie, were also completing a year-long art project involving sculpture, stop-motion animation and time-lapse video. Using the backyard of their Montreal apartment as an installation site, Emi and Jordan evolved and devolved an entire miniature world, conjuring an historical arc of civilization from early settlement and relative harmony with nature to gradual industrialisation, mechanisation and the inevitable discontents of over-production, waste and decline.

Emi and Jordan worked on this installation every day for a year, meticulously building, shaping and documenting its trajectory with time-lapse video while also shooting many detailed sequences with stop-motion photography. The resulting work is a wondrous, unpretentious, gently mystical 23-minute video piece entitled Wurld, for which they also composed the soundtrack.

Wurld premiered at the Vienna International Film Festival in November 2009 and received a Canadian premiere at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (MACM) in May 2010. Both screenings were also followed by a live performance by Elfin Saddle. For the Montreal screening, Jordan and Emi were given carte blanche to create a new sculptural installation to accompany the live performance, reflecting the couple's decade-long practice as installation artists and makers of kinetic sculpture. Their MACM sculpture comprised a large rotating disc loaded with minutiae, close-lit and video-projected onto a large screen behind the band. The live performance was filmed by Constellation in conjunction with the MACM technical staff and the video was edited by Seth W. Owen.

We are thrilled to be presenting a special DVD edition of the Wurld film along with 30 minutes of previously unreleased Elfin Saddle music, including a 15-minute abridged and re-mastered version of the Wurld soundtrack and another 15 minutes of music additionally highlighting the band's instrumental work.

The DVD contents include:

- the Wurld film
- Elfin Saddle concert filmed at MACM
- a sequence of "deleted scenes" from Wurld
- a film of the rotating sculpture installed at the MACM set to the music of one of the new instrumental pieces
- a video document of a 2005 art installation by Emi and Jordan that helps contextualise the couple's broader art practice and history
- 30 minutes of extractable WAV and MP3 audio files featuring the Wurld soundtrack and other new Elfin Saddle music

Needless to say, the music component is also pressed to vinyl in the 10"+DVD edition (now sold out).

Credits

Emi Honda: various instruments
Jordan Mckenzie: various instruments

Guests

For the Elfin Saddle concert video:
Nathan Gage: bass, trumpet
Kristina Koropecki: cello
Nick Scribner: violin, melodica

Recorded by J. McKenzie at Alma House, Montreal, 2007-2010. "A Sinking Celebration" recorded at The Brown House, Victoria, 2005. Audio mastered by Harris Newman. Video editing by Jordan McKenzie except Elfin Saddle live concert video edited by Seth W. Owen. DVD authoring by Brendan Reed.

Reviews

"The instrumental soundtrack beautifully reflects each tiny society – a mechanical banjo loop builds up with accordion, militaristic percussion and minute whirring sounds as a series of automata wind their way through the day before a somnambulant rhythmic lilt takes us towards a lantern lit night...A superb collection of sound and vision, brought together by a truly fascinating duo." – Fluid Radio

"Lovingly put together and fully realised as a conceptual work, Wurld is a small, assured statement of artistry and example by one of Constellations most intriguing new bands... Their music is enveloping and hugely beautiful, but so unconcerned with notions of grandeur- even when reciting such a grand meta-narrative as a history of society’s evolution." – The 405

"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...This Wurld is definitely worth exploring." – Blurt Online

"Wurld is an odd and engaging beast...The whole thing feels like a meditation on a hidden world soaked in opiates...There is a certain somberness about the whole affair but it is not without joy...Everything feels natural and in place — nothing feels artificial or generated." – Foxy Digitalis

"Elfin Saddle’s Wurld is a complex weave of art and nature, musical chemistry and historical themes. The experimental video, which takes place in a small garden plot, is a patient and deep discourse about the nature of our existence, from the earth we rise and proceed through different evolutionary states." – Trebuchet