Split Tooth audiobook nominated for 2019 Audie Award.

Upcoming performances include London, UK, Rewire Festival and Washington, DC.

LISTEN HERE

Photo Credit: Rebecca Wood

“A three dimensional sonic soundscape that alternates between harsh and lush, barren and fecund.” – Passion of the Weiss

“Full of thrumming echoes not dissimilar to flurries of snow; its pretty eeriness is perfect for the winter.” – Elle, 10 Best Songs of 2019 So Far

“Wordless vocals float over a gently pulsing rhythm and spare piano…By the end, her voice has drifted up into the stratosphere.” – New Sounds

Environmental, historical, futuristic, experimental: Tanya Tagaq’s Toothsayer, out today, conveys the extreme and deadly elements of winter in the High Arctic. From the nightmarish shards of “Icebreaker” to the crystalline delicacy of the title track to the terrifying serenity of “Hypothermia,” Tagaq also describes physiological sensations of snowblindness and fatal exposure to the cold in exquisitely unnerving detail. Toothsayer, a title that to speaks to wisdom and foresight, is also a nod to the knowledge required to survive such harsh conditions.  

The EP, made with long-time percussionist Jean Martin and UK experimental electronica artist Ash Koosha, originated as a score for the National Maritime Museum’s permanent Polar Worlds exhibit, which includes the Franklin Expedition. “I’m looking forward to seeing the exhibition,” says Tagaq, who will be in London for a show at Borderline on March 27. “Quite often Indigenous cultures are reduced to primitive culture or glorified in their ‘untouched’ phase, but it’s not often considered as contemporary culture. I was happy to be involved because the exhibit acknowledges our culture in a contemporary sense.”

Album art by Kevin Earl Taylor

TOUR DATES:

KINGSTON, ON: Isabel Bader Theatre, Mar 6, w/ NAC Orchestra

OTTAWA, ON: NAC, Mar 8 w/ NAC Orchestra

LONDON, UK: The Garage, Mar 27 

THE HAGUE, NL: Rewire Festival, Mar 29

WASHINGTON, DC: Millennium Stage, April 5

CALGARY, AB: Jack Singer Concert Hall, April 27 w/ Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra 

SAMUELSBERG, NORWAY: Riddu Riddu, Jul 10-14

Six Shooter is thrilled to welcome Zaki Ibrahim to the artist management roster. The enigmatic, highly acclaimed songwriter, now back in Toronto following the 2018 release of The Secret Life of Planets, defies simplifications of identity and genre along with other industry paradigms, which is to say she fits the Six Shooter artist profile perfectly. “The first time I saw Zaki perform at Polaris several years ago blew me away. It was a performance I will never forget.,” says Six Shooter Management President Helen Britton. “To have since met Zaki, connected with her and now to have ultimately signed such a rare talent is thrilling. She is a fantastic addition to our management roster, and I look forward to sharing all her upcoming plans with the world in the coming months.”

Ibrahim has upcoming headline shows and festival appearances in Canada, including at Toronto’s Great Hall this week. Overseas showcases, including at prestigious Le Printemps de Bourges festival in France, are planned for spring, where Ibrahim will be accompanied by Six Shooter Records’ new VP International Business Development, Allison Outhit.

Now booked by barrier-crushing trailblazer Tao-Ming Lau of Blue Crane, an agency that prioritizes underrepresented artists including women, LGBT and artists of colour, Ibrahim’s global tour history includes much of Europe, South Africa and North America, from Red Bull Studio Cape Town to Mongrel Media’s TIFF parties.

A nomad in both philosophical and logistical senses, Ibrahim’s extensive and varied network of collaborators, creatives and contributors has established a global presence primed to rise.

TOUR DATES

TORONTO, ON: The Great Hall, Feb 21 w/ DJ Bambii + Myst Milano

CALGARY, AB: Block Heater Festival, ATB Financial Stage (NMC), Feb 23 

LISTEN

• The Secret Life of Planets, 2018.
• Orbit, Red Bull Music Studio Cape, 2016.

WATCH

•  CBC Music First Play Live, 2018.
• “Do” Polaris Prize Gala performance, 2013.

READ

• Anupa Mistry’s Pitchfork review of The Secret Life of Planets.
• Helen Spitzer’s NUVO magazine profile.
• Ben Rayner’s Toronto Star profile.

Whitehorse’s debut holiday record, A Whitehorse Winter Classic, has been nominated for the Adult Alternative Album of The Year at this year’s Juno awards while The Deep Dark Woods’ haunting album, Yarrow, is in the running for the Contemporary Roots Album of The Year. This year’s Juno Awards will take place at London, ON’s Budweiser Gardens on March 17. Click here for tickets and details.

TANYA TAGAQ SHARES “SNOWBLIND,” CRYSTALLINE AMBIENT COMPOSITION FROM FORTHCOMING TOOTHSAYER EP, OUT 3/1/19 VIA SIX SHOOTER RECORDS.

LISTEN TO “SNOWBLIND” HERE.

Toothsayer, conceptual electronic collection, originated as Royal Museums Greenwich (UK) commission.

Vinyl spoken-word edition of best-selling, New Yorker-reviewed debut novel Split Tooth out now. See highly NSFW cover art by graphic novelist Jaime Hernandez (Love and Rockets) here. 

Toothsayer album cover art by Kevin Earl Taylor

“Tagaq’s surreal meld of poetry and prose transmutes the Arctic’s boundless beauty, intensity, and desolation into a wrenching contemporary mythology.” – New Yorker

“Tagaq’s emotional intelligence is aspirational.” – Anupa Mistry, Globe and Mail

“An Inuk throat singer who’s got a fluidity in her rasp and a wail that reflects like crystal.” – Stereogum

For those unable to experience experimental Inuk artist Tanya Tagaq’s sonic contribution to National Maritime Museum’s “Polar Worlds” exhibit in situ in London, UK, Tagaq announces the work will be released as a digital EP titled Toothsayer via Six Shooter Records. Toothsayer, a 5-track soundscape created for the exhibit, expands Tagaq’s prestigious compositional work with ambient electronic and piano-driven textures.

With ecological precision and a crypto-travelogue narrative, Toothsayer features Tagaq working with long-time percussionist Jean Martin, who produced the EP. UK experimental electronic artist Ash Koosha, who met Tagaq for the first time when the artists were invited to work together for a BBC Late Junction session in 2017, also performs on “Snowblind” and “Submerged.”

“Snowblind,” the first song shared from the collection, expresses the sensory experience of snowblindness, a condition that can produce colourful pulsating shapes amidst darkness. The contrast of brightness and darkness, a recurring theme in Tagaq’s work, is at once environmental, physical,  emotional and political. “I named this Toothsayer because I always liked the term soothsayer, to look into the future and to speak wisely,” says Tagaq of the title. “Teeth represent protection and hunting in nature. We are going to have to get our fists up and our teeth out to carve our way to survival in this world.”

Organized as a categorical assessment of the different and extreme elements of the Nunavut winter, where “it’s so easy to succumb to death in the north purely by the elements, including the socio and political elements,” the EP also connects in title and theme with Split Tooth, Tagaq’s debut novel. The book, a powerfully permeative mythobiography about a girl growing up in Nunavut in the 1970s, was released in September 2018 and immediately found a place on the Giller Prize Long List, Canada’s top fiction prize. The work also appeared on year end Best Of lists including NPR, Globe and Mail, CBC, Toronto Star and more. Apple Music named the work Canada’s Best Canadian Audiobook; narrated by Tagaq with improvised vocal elements, Split Tooth’s fact-fiction-dreamscapes come alive in this spoken word form, which moves between silky hypnotic poetry and carotid-ripping song. Toothsayer travels a similar path to Split Tooth through poles of exquisite delicacy, frenzy and fury.

Toothsayer will be released March 1, 2019 on Six Shooter Records.

TOUR DATES:

WINNIPEG, MB: WECC, Jan 22*
SASKATOON, SK: Persephone Theatre, Jan 24*
GUELPH, ON: River Run Centre, Jan 25*
SEATTLE, WA: Meany Centre for the Performing Arts, Feb 8
OTTAWA, ON: Southminster United Church, Ottawa International Writers Festival, Feb 15
KINGSTON, ON: Isabel Bader Theatre, Mar 6, w/ NAC Orchestra
OTTAWA, ON: NAC, Mar 8 w/ NAC Orchestra
LONDON, UK: The Garage, Mar 27
WASHINGTON, DC: Millennium Stage, April 5
CALGARY, AB: Jack Singer Concert Hall, April 27 w/ Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra
SAMUELSBERG, NORWAY: Riddu Riddu, Jul 10-14

*book reading + band performance

New position, based out of Six Shooter’s Toronto headquarters, will focus on expansion and market development for label and management companies.

Six Shooter Records is supremely thrilled to announce that music industry trailblazer and all-around impressive entertainment business veteran Allison Outhit has joined the independent label as VP International Business Development, a new position created to command and catalyze international profile, reach and activity.

Talented, driven and substantively experienced, Outhit brings her relentless pursuit of artist development and steadfast commitment to fostering diversity and inclusion to the label. With decades of executive-level experience across public and private entertainment entities alongside her years of working directly with artists to build sustainable, impactful careers, Outhit is an ideal and exciting addition to Six Shooter. With new signings to be announced, 2019 promises to be a compelling and crucial time of roster growth, extensive planning and expansive thinking.

“Six Shooter is poised for significant expansion in the next couple of years (we’ve got BIG PLANS),” says Six Shooter President Shauna de Cartier. “We are beyond excited to welcome a superstar like Allison to our company. She brings with her incredible insight, energy, BIG BRAINS, and a rock solid resume of experience and expertise, which will translate into even more international success for our artists.”

“Six Shooter’s commitment to long-term careers and their ever-burning fire to build, grow and expand internationally is a perfect fit for me,” says Outhit. “As a company and a team, Six Shooter is all about tenacity, loyalty, and generosity. I am so impressed by their artist-forward philosophy and their efforts to effect change in the industry. I want to help this become a diverse global brand.”

Outhit’s first international activity will be participating Canadian Heritage’s upcoming Trade Mission to Latin America, with stops in Mexico, Colombia and Argentina.

ABOUT ALLISON OUTHIT

Born in Halifax, Outhit began her career as a production assistant with UK concert giant Harvey Goldsmith. Over the next 10 years, Allison rounded all the corners at the intersection of Art and Commerce, with stints in community radio, journalism, music and video production, and arts administration in London, Montreal, Halifax and Toronto, while also completing a law degree.

After touring as lead guitarist/vocalist/songwriter with several bands, releasing multiple albums and inking a co-publishing deal with Warner/Chappell Music, Allison went to work in film and television production, amassing over 70 hours of production credits and one Gemini nomination. In 2006, she left film production to join Toronto-based indie label/manager/distributor Outside Music as Head of Business Affairs.

In February 2011, Outhit joined the Foundation Assisting Canadian Talent on Recordings (FACTOR) as its Vice President of Operations. At FACTOR, Allison was a key imagineer of program and operational changes that redesigned and reinvigorated Canada’s largest and most impactful music funding organization.

Allison is a lifelong fighter for social justice. She is proud to have been mentored in community legal advocacy by the late African-Nova Scotian activist Rocky Jones, and recently completed the Centennial Certificate in Leadership and Inclusion.

The proud recipient of the Halifax Pop Explosion’s 2014 Scene Builder Award, Outhit’s life in the musical trenches, along with her depth of entertainment business experience and legal knowledge, give her a skill set uniquely primed to help artists keep on keeping on.

Toxic lakes, wellness clinics and mud-caked bodies: the cardinal direction of Ensign Broderick’s BloodCrush is a saline fever dream, calibrated to the cultish wraith waste vibes of California’s Imperial Valley. Inspired by pilgrimage, anti-war protests, Decca-era Stones and Smetana, BloodCrush is the first new collection from an artist who announced himself earlier in 2018 with four archival albums of wildly ambitious, hyper-referential art pop, a fraction of his forty years’ of recordings.

Buy or stream BloodCrush here.