Canadian composer and violinist Saraj Neufeld, long-time member of Arcade Fire and founding member of Bell Orchestre, has announced the release of her third solo album. Detritus will be out on May 14th via One Little Independent Records. According to the press release, it confronts anguish with beauty, turmoil with grace, gliding through the present like a dancer mid-motion, reaching through space ’til she’s caught.
She explains “I was inspired by both a sense of interior aloneness, and a sense of deep intimacy. Within both, a profound questioning of identity and intention, and ultimately, a grieving over one’s former sense of self. The stories we’ve told ourselves that we can no longer believe. Nestled within deep layers of comfort, familiarity, and solace, I’m able to repeat myself again and again, never learning, never looking back. Simultaneously becoming wiser and more ignorant as the years wind on, beauty and grace exist even here, in this rift.”
We already shared “Stories”; “With Love and Blindness” is a new excerpt which comes with the official video directed by Jason Last.
“The video for With Love and Blindness came together through a long-time collaboration between myself and videographer Jason Last” Sarah tells us, “I knew that Jason and I would work together again on some visual aspect for my third solo release, and it so happened that before I even began recording the album, we were presented with the opportunity to do a mini residence on Corsica with Providenza; an amazing collective with a farm, cultural laboratory, festival and residency program.
I was doing a short solo tour in Europe in the summer of 2019 in order to re-work some of the pieces from the dance collaboration to begin to find a shape for the album that was to be recorded in the Fall. In the middle of that tour, Jason and I travelled to Corsica for several days (graced once again with a suitcase containing Esteban Cortazar’s unique and beautiful creations). Besides performing in Providenza’s outdoor amphitheater, we were immersed in nature, literally staying in a treehouse perched on the side of a mountain, overlooking the dramatic coastline.
I found that the pulse of the landscape resonated with the essence of the music, especially With Love and Blindness; a sense of rawness, of sensuality, of a strange gravity intensified by the hypnotic summer heat and the general otherworldliness of the place.”
Director Jason Last continues; “My ongoing creative collaboration with Sarah has always been an instinctive process. Because we know each other so well, and have worked together for so long, there is a lot of knowledge and trust that goes into the inspiration. The video is an exploration of our time there, surrounded by the rugged nature of this Mediterranean island that lends so well to the energy behind her music. Somewhere between documentation and fantasy, we captured Sarah in these environments, which later came together to visualize this powerful song from her new record.”
