Inuit throat-singer Tanya Tagaq won Aboriginal album of the year at Canada’s Juno awards last year, but she is unlikely to end up on the coffee tables of right-on world music fans: this is a violent and stirring meditation on apocalyptic climate change. She stations herself at the raw and unpretty end of the already guttural world of throat singing, voicing an array of constipated growls, lupine snuffles and girlish yelps – to some listeners it will sound merely silly, and almost everyone will be turned off by the baggy hip-hop track Centre, a reminder that you don’t go to environmental rallies for the music. But elsewhere Tagaq is riveting, especially when multitracked and given eight or so minutes to range jazzily around art-metal backdrops. Summoning conjures unease with a far-off cello and builds to cult-like chanting, while Cold rides a gnarly groove into a vision of eternal meltwater. Anyone who loves Jenny Hval’s blood-soaked ruminations or Maja Ratkje’s explosive tics will be transfixed.
