Elfin Saddle

NATURAL & MANUFACTURED SOUND:
ELFIN SADDLE & BROKEN DEER

Artist  Talks
Saturday, July 17, 2010, 1 PM
Odd Fellows Ballroom

Elfin Saddle Concert
Saturday, July 18, 2010
St. Paul’s Anglican Church, 8pm

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PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The ODD Gallery is pleased to present N&M Sound in partnership with theDawson City Music Festival(DCMF). This addition to The Natural & The Manufactured series explores the world of sound art within the conceptual context of the N&M framework.

The sonic projects by Broken Deer (Lindsay Dobbin from Whitehorse, Yukon) and Elfin Saddle (Jordan McKenzie, Emi Honda and Nathan Gage from Montreal), share an interest in site-specificity,  place and environment as they relate to sound production, as well as sustained fascination with the fluid boundaries between produced and “natural” sounds, and the relationship between visual art and music. Both of these art-sound projects find inspiration in hybrid forumulations of sound, the recording process, and the specifc contexts where sound can be found or presented. Their work often spills over into  video work and other visual forms.

Dobbin’s BROKEN DEER is a “low-fi recording project that celebrates nature, tender histories and rural decay.” Focusing on the inextricable relationship between matter and sound, Broken Deer  utilizes field recordings, altered recordings, static and hiss, instrumental intervention / invention and voice to create highly personalized sonic landscapes. Dobbin descibes her Broken Deer project as  “a weld of geology and sound. A historical recovery. The earth building up and collapsing, weathered down, restrained and decayed. Spaces of loss sifting around underneath. Little pieces quietly fading, shifting, wanting to sweep the sky.”

ELFIN SADDLE’S music blends traditions of western and eastern “folk” music , with pop structures, ambient washes and lilting melodies. Using invented, hand-made instruments, found objects and altered instruments (pots and pans, one-handed accordians and automatonic instruments that play themselves), along side more traditional instruments, Elfin Saddle’s music often sounds at once mythical and futuristic. The most fundamental phenomena of sound–motion, vibration and the physcial interaction between two objects or forces–becomes the raw material for music that is constructed and composed. Elfin Saddle’s project suggests that all sound, even in its most unmediated and unarranged state, is inherently a product of nature.

For their artist talks at KIAC’s Odd Fellows Ballroom, Broken Deer and Elfin Saddle will be discussing their work, playing recordings, screening related videos, and giving an introduction to their process and practice. After their talks, Elfin Saddle will be presenting a live concert as part of the Dawson City Music Festival while Broken Deer will be creating a commissioned work in collaboration with Festival Performers and local musicians that will be subsequently broadcast on CFYT Radio 106.9 FM in Dawson City.

 

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES


BROKEN DEER is one of many sound and music projects by Lindsay Dobbin of Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. She is also busy with Pure Shores, a solo pop outlet and Sync-o a video and sound project that combines 90s pop music with old documentaries. Broken Deer recordings include 
Our Small Going (Gandhara Recordings, 2006) and Songs for Imbolc (Scotch Tapes, 2010)

Lindsay Dobbin Website
Lindsay Dobbin at MySpace

Founded by Jordan McKenzie and Emi Honda, ELFIN SADDLE also includes Nathan Gage on tuba and stand-up bass. Their work as been recorded on two albums, Gigantic Mother / Wounded Child (Kill Devil Hills, 2008) and Ringing for the Begin Again (Constellation, 2009). Their newest release,Wurld, a video animation with new songs, will be released by Constellation in fall 2010. Elfin Saddle is based in Montreal.

Elfin Saddle Website
Elfin Saddle at Myspace
Elfin Saddle at Constellation Records