Inuit throat singer and artist Tanya Tagaq won the Polaris Prize for best Canadian album in 2014 for Animism, a work of primal beauty and extreme musicality, that had at its centre ancient exhalation and inhalation vocal techniques. In isolation those sounds are extraordinary, in the hands of someone like Tagaq we get a deeply guttural, orgiastic outpouring of vocal wheezes, mini-explosions and what can only be described as a cacophony of animalistic noises. In collaboration with other vocalists and musicians, it really can sound like nothing on earth.

With Jesse Zubot collaborating as producer and lead violinist, helped by Tuvan throat singer Radik Tyulyush, rapper Shad, traditional Inut singer Ruben Komangapik, drummer/percussionist Jean Martin, and Taagaq's young daughter Inuuja, Retribution is a stunning work of originality, hard hitting politics, and genre-hopping soundscapes.

The Inuit are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Canada, Alaska and Greenland. Tagaq herself first developed her own solo form of Inuit throat singing in her teens, and, as a practically unknown artist, was invited by Bjork to collaborate on her 2004 Medulla album. Retribution his her fifth album and should cement her reputation as an original artist of skill, imagination and, indeed, relevance.

Throughout Retribution, themes of indigenous rights, women’s rights, and climate change permeate, often aligned with the idea of ancestral lineage and heritage. Often aggressive in tone and in spirit, but imbued with a warm beating heart, this extraordinary work begins with ‘Ajaja’. Aligning the spiritual with the physical, traditional Inuk singer Ruben Komangapik is featured here along with Tagaq’s daughter – representing the generations to come – as the mimicked sound of howling winds, plucked and bowed strings, and the beat of a drum signifying the portent to come. The album is bookended with a sublime version of Nirvana’s controversial ‘Rape Me’, the grunge-punk band that Tagaq grew up listening to. Singing the lyrics this time (something she does several times on the album, rather than just creating sounds via her throat) in hushed, despairing tones. She’s accompanied by a sombre tom-drum beat, single note plodding bass and rhythmic electric guitar. With a deep appreciation of this humanistic anti-rape song in Tagaq's hands, she flips it, singing from her point of view rather than Cobain’s third person, detailing the stigma attached to feminism and how stopping violence against women extends to women's rights and indigenous rights. The raping of their lands, a key element of the album, as the Inuit people literally live on the edge of the impending climate emergency, highlighted by the oft-predicted death of the Arctic ecosystem

These two songs, purposefully bookending each other, demonstratively tell us that Tagaq is in no mood to pull punches, as can be very forcibly heard on the title track itself: an aggressive and partly improvised portrait of a world in turmoil, full of ‘fire and brimstone’ as Tagaq puts it, as she integrates issues of women’s rights, indigenous rights, and climate change. In other words a lack of respect for one begets a lack of respect elsewhere. As the complex voices overlay insistently pummelling beats, growing in apocalyptic sound, a strangulated noise-punk atmosphere permeating, and the de-feminisation of Mother Nature at the centre of the song, Tagaq elevates science over nature in the battle to get rid of this ‘sickness’, as she sees it.

Climate change and environmental degradation lie at the core of ‘Nacreous’, a spacious yet ominous sounding a capella, featuring Nagaq and the 50-strong Toronto Elemental Choir, along with the devilishly guttural outpourings of Tuvan throat singer Radik Tyulyush. But there is also beauty here: ‘Nacreous’ referring to a type of cloud that, once they interact with certain acids in the atmosphere, helps to cause the breakdown of ozone. Despite that there is a magical beauty in their look when seen from a distance. The Toronto Elemental Choir are at work again on ‘Summoning’, that, more than anything here, replicates Nagaq’s live sound. The abstract soundscape indicates turbulence, lurking just below the surface, as violin screeches, chattering vocal sounds, percussive clanging and the choir free-form their way to a wild chanting cacophony.

This shifting in moods from the relatively serene to the explosive (and all points in-between) continues throughout Retribution; from the danceable, hip hop infused ‘Centre’ (which features Canadian rapper Shad) to the poetic ‘Sivulivinivut’; and from the deep grooves and traditional beats of ‘Aorta’ to the improvised throat singing that works its way into ‘Cold’ (that begins with mellifluously stated scientific facts about the melting glacial covering of northern Canada). Retribution focuses on the challenges that the military-industrial complex has brought to a place like Canada, where their workings are directly affecting the indigenous people. This is never more so explored than on the damning ’Sulfur’, the traditional ‘smell’ of hell. Purposefully suggestive of the physical process of resource extraction via the mechanical and organic vocals and violins. These giant mechanical machines that dominate the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, do their work in a place that Tagaq unequivocally sees as evil.

For the greater part this is not easy-listening music. But for those who admire a brutal honesty, allied to a keen intelligence, and visceral, dramatic, and otherworldly music, fronted by the intense and quite extraordinary vocals of Tagaq and friends; Retribution is one of the most important musical statements of recent years.
Jeff Hemmings

Website: tanyatagaq.com
Facebook: facebook.com/tanyatagaq
Twitter: twitter.com/tagaq