Julian Koster and His Singing Saws

The world met Julian Koster as part of the Elephant 6 Collective in the 1990s, when he played a variety of instruments with Neutral Milk Hotel, Olivia Tremor Control, Elf Power, and his own projects, The Music Tapes and The Orbiting Human Circus. In 2008, he released The Singing Saw at Christmastime, and part of the conceit is that the saws actually do the singing. He's not playing the saws; he's encouraging them to sing.

That element of whimsy is part of the fun of Koster's projects and our conversation, though he brought engineer Nesey Gallons on the call with him to be a lifeline when Koster starts to drift too far out. 

Our conversation covers some ground, from an unexpected appearance by Leadbelly to a Christmas interlude courtesy of Japanese filmmaker Akira  Kurosawa. Koster and Gallons also turned me on to a Folksways compilation of Ukrainian Christmas songs. The song we hear is "The Miracle of the Birth."