Today Tanya Tagaq has released two new songs from forthcoming album Tongues, out March 11th on Six Shooter Records. “Colonizer” and “Colonizer (Tundra Mix),” – the raw and the cooked version – are moments for accountability, not deflection.
“Colonizer” exploded spontaneously in Tagaq’s improvised live show. On stage with Nanook of the North, in Manchester and overlooking Columbus Circle in New York City: this is Tagaq’s unambiguous response to performing in visibly and symbolically colonial spaces. The song clenches at the intersection of experience, violence and resistance, with droning, driving layers that throb, beat and buzz under Tagaq’s vocal rhythms.
“Colonizer (Tundra Mix),” hits differently, the product of creative marination with producers Saul Williams and Gonjasufi. Tundra Mix shows the collaborative and generative dimension of the Tongues studio experience and its potent mix of artists. This approach, more sous vide than improvised eruption, yielded a song that squelches and stretches with monophic, hypnotic vocal abstraction in place of a windpipe rip.
Listen to “Colonizer” below:
Listen to “Colonizer (Tundra Mix)” below: