Tanya Tagaq - Retribution

The songs on Retribution encompass terror, rage, ecstasy, adoration and bone-leeching sadness. At a time when Canada is reckoning with the historic mistreatment of its indigenous population, Tanya Tagaq's new album demands retribution.

Tagaq is an Inuk throat singer, whose career has exploded both the global profile of the craft and the boundaries of the practice itself. Traditionally, throat singing (or katajjaq) is a breathing game played by two women standing inches apart, trying to make each other laugh. Tagaq has trained herself to perform alone, maintaining the constant sound usually provided by two cyclical voices because she has learned, staggeringly, to sing with equal force when she inhales and exhales. And she's not playing a game.

Tagaq's music is inseparable from her activism, both drawing attention to the still-unsolved murders and disappearances of thousands of indigenous women, the pillaging of the earth and the decimation of Inuit culture. "If my singing is a platform to help these issues being raised," she has said, "then I will do it with love, with laughter and with fists."

This vinyl edition produced by Six Shooter Records in 2016.

TRACKLISTING:

1. Ajaaja
2. Retribution
3. Aorta
4. Centre
5. Summoning
6. Cold
7. Rape Me