Ikaluktutiak-based Tanya Tagaq gets militant on ‘Foxtrot’, the first single off her forthcoming album, Saputjiji.
On January 16, Tanya Tagaq posted the cover of her new record on Instagram with the caption “Saputjiji. Designated protector. We must stand. We must protect her. The world is choking on the rancid smoke of capitalism. We must breathe. You are being feasted upon. Time to embrace carnivorous tendencies. Defend, protect, embrace.” Reading more like a manifesto than a press release, it flies in the face of the idea of social justice and environmentalism are the territory of meek, bleeding-heart lyrics. With ‘Foxtrot’, Tagaq reminds us – this is war.
For over 20 years, Tagaq’s music has been getting progressively more pissed. While her earliest material had a sense of darkness on its peripheries, it was also wreathed in light, snowblind and sunstruck as someone wandering the frozen primordial wilderness of Ikaluktutiak (the Inuit name for Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, where Tagaq is from). Considering the past couple of decades, it’s no surprise that Tagaq’s beats are getting harder, darker; her vocals more anguished and furious. While her earlier work could get aggressive and mechanistic, she could also still sound like a snowbound sorceress calling the north wind, urging the wildflowers from their winter torpor.
On ‘Foxtrot,’ on the other hand, Tagaq’s gone full cyberpunk. The beats, produced by Gonjasufi and longtime collaborator Jean Martin are as weighty and as ponderous as a mecha dragging itself across some desolate landscape. Her vocals, backed by Fucked Up’s Damian Abraham, are pure valkyrie malevolence, as the pair rattle off the military acronyms for “fuck you,” before advising the death merchants to go down with their ship.
Sonically, spiritually, ‘Foxtrot’ is about as subtle as a sledgehammer. The time for subtlety is long past, however, at least for the time being. Later on in the press release for Saputjiji, Tagaq calls out the “military-industrial-capitalist-tech powers of the times.” Considering the state of the world and all of its inhabitants, it’s no surprise that Tagaq’s pissed off at pretty much everything. Luckily for us, Tagaq’s anger sounds so good.
Saputjiji will be released on March 6, 2026 via Six Shooter Records. She’ll also be unveiling a new work for theatre, Split Tooth: Saputjiji, on February 5, 2026 at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts in Vancouver, British Columbia as part of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival.
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