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TANYA TAGAQ shares furious new single “Colonizer”

• 4th Jan 2022

Tanya Tagaq releases 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. Oh you’re guilty. It’s not a question.

“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. 

You don’t think about what’s underfoot until it stirs. Tanya Tagaq, an experimental, improvisational, exceptional artist, has felt the land beneath her shake. To survive, you have to know what you’re doing. To survive, you have to trust in the body. Tagaq’s power, her voice, still comes from this place, where to defy nature is doom. 

“Colonizer” follows “Tongues“ the title track from Tagaq’s forthcoming album, which enters deep chasms and dangerous spaces. ‘Tongues’ speaks not to horrors and crisis, as previous Tagaq albums wordlessly, powerfully encircled, but directly of these things. It’s Tagaq at her most explicit and specific. Delicate, poetic passages from Split Tooth, Tagaq’s bestselling, award winning mythobiography, crash against an industrial, electronic exoskeleton. 

Tanya Tagaq‘s new album is a manual for inner and outer revolution. It is the soundtrack of righteous taking-back of personhood and power. It is a triumph of strength and intelligence that invites the listener to join her in a personal victory over colonization, over those who take without consent.

‘Tongues’ will be released on March 11th 2022 via Six Shooter Records. Pre-order & streaming links here.

‘Tongues’ track list:
1. In Me
2. Tongues
3. Colonizer
4. Teeth Agape
5. Birth
6. I Forgive Me
7. Nuclear
8. Do Not Fear Love
9. Earth Monster
10. Colonizer (Tundra Mix)