OMBIIGIZI RELEASES DEBUT LP, SEWN BACK TOGETHER

COLLABORATION BY ZOON AND STATUS/NON-STATUS OUT TODAY ON ARTS & CRAFTS

WATCH / SHARE “SPIRIT IN ME” HERE

BUY / STREAM SEWN BACK TOGETHER HERE

"With all these styles woven together as part of an essential and ongoing social conversation, Sewn Back Together is ultimately a work of healing. With introspective, emotional resonance and formidable guitar tones, OMBIIGIZI's noise cuts through the static, loud and proud” -  Exclaim!

"Together, Monkman and Sturgeon show new plaintive depths to their writing, crafting a tribute to the joys and innocence of childhood." - Under The Radar

"Ombiigizi’s debut, Sewn Back Together, flows like a river, finding a path forward against all obstacles" - Dominionated

Photo Credit : Rima Sater // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Today, OMBIIGIZI, (pronounced om-BEE-ga-ZAY, meaning s/he is noisy) is celebrating the release of their debut album, Sewn Back Together, and sharing the new visualizer for album centerpiece “Spirit In Me.” Frayed electric guitars, multidimensional percussion, and huge emotive melodies show the essence of OMBIIGIZI on “Spirit In Me,” with the power of family at its core. Of the track, the band says, “We each have our own story to tell, but putting our circle together in honour of our ancestors helps us weave a future.”

It’s our prophecy 
The spirit in me
I look to the past after all that’s been cast
And whose land are you on 
We’ve known all along 
Get sewn back together 
Yea we’re still survivors

WATCH / SHARE “SPIRIT IN ME” HERE

A collaboration between Zoon (Daniel Monkman) and Status/Non-Status (Sturgeon), OMBIIGIZI are Anishnaabe artists who explore their cultural histories through sound. An amalgam of their unique Indigenous heritages and personal musical architectures, Daniel and Adam imbue their lyrics with their families' storytelling, revealing truths and finding common ground amidst their differences. The debut album Sewn Back Together is a fusion of individuality – a reflection on Adam and Daniel's commitment to each other as collaborators and distinct members of their community.

WATCH / SHARE "CHERRY COKE" HERE

Putting aside the tonal nuances of their previous work as Zoon and Status/Non-Status (formerly known as WHOOP-Szo), OMBIIGIZI strips back the waves of distortion to reveal themselves, their voices, writing and improvising for the sake of the song. The family on Sewn Back Together includes the production duo of Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene and Nyles Spencer of The Bathouse Studio. Recorded there in fast and intentional sessions during the summer of 2021, Drew and Spencer – along with musicians Eric Lourenço and Drew McLeod from Status/Non-Status and Zoon, respectively – helped steer this collision of divergent artists into some glorious sonic territory steeped in shoegaze, dream pop, anthemic rock, Chicago post-rock, and 2nd wave emo. While not always getting to play and perform alongside other members of their community, OMBIIGIZI is a coming together – with Sewn Back Together, a resounding statement shaped by healing and the guidance of culture.

WATCH / SHARE "RESIDENTIAL MILITARY” HERE


ESSAY BY WAUBGESHIG RICE:
The Anishinaabe revival is accelerating. Our artists are becoming more resurgent in all realms: telling the stories, singing the songs, and creating the imagery to further solidify our everlasting presence on this land. The soundtrack to this movement is diverse profound, and beautiful. The Anishinaabe sonic revolution is richly layered and wide-reaching, inspiring and influencing all generations to gather, sing, and speak, as we’ve always done. And at the core of this renewal are artists like OMBIIGIZI.

Adam Sturgeon and Daniel Monkman have come together in the spirit of making noise in a good way for our people. They have documented this moment in time while paying homage to the ancestors who kept our language and stories alive. There is a deep respect and love embedded in these songs for Anishinaabe sounds and voices. These songs proudly tell family and community stories, and they exquisitely conjure a hopeful future that will result from our current collective efforts to share our realities with each other and the world.

 Sewn Back Together is a passionate journey. It meanders like a nurturing stream, weaving in and out of the tangible and spiritual worlds, as all time-honoured Anishinaabe stories and songs have done. It harkens back to ancient melodies and rhythms while using modern tools and instruments to centre us in our identities as the original storytellers of this land. It is essential listening as we forge our future and reclaim and revive who we are.

Sewn Back Together Album Art // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

 OMBIIGIZI - SEWN BACK TOGETHER - TRACKLISTING
1. Cherry Coke
2. Residential Military
3. The Once Child
4. Niiyo Biboonagizi 
5. Ogiin
6. Spirit In Me
7. Yaweh
8. Birch Bark Paper Trails 
9. Zaagitoon 

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JENNY BERKEL SIGNS WITH OUTSIDE MUSIC FOR NEW LP, SHARES FIRST SINGLE

Photo Credit : Rima Sater// DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

“I wrote the album in a tiny apartment, at a time when everything felt big and overwhelming,” says poet and songwriter Jenny Berkel about her new album, These Are the Sounds Left from Leaving, out May 13 on Outside Music. She was living in a brownstone walk-up full of radiant light and the ever-present soundscape of a leaky bath faucet. It was a sudden move at the time — a spontaneous departure from touring, bustling city life, being many things to many people — that landed Jenny in a space of self-imposed stillness.

“The songs themselves are a study of proximity, bringing big fears into small spaces,” says Jenny, reflecting on the album. “They’re intimate examinations of a world that often overwhelms.” Each song is set in the micro-world of a keen feeling observer, trying to parse a mindful moment in a setting where it feels impossible to drop a truth anchor—a post-Trump, heavily gaslit world where perceptions of reality remain distorted.

The album sees Jenny taking on a producer's role, co-producing alongside Dan Edmonds and Ryan Boldt (The Deep Dark Woods) with string arrangements by Colin Nealis (Andy Shauf). The album’s first single, “You Think You’re Like The Rain”, also sees contributions from the critically acclaimed folk duo Clayton Linthicum and Kacy Anderson (Kacy & Clayton).

“You Think You’re Like the Rain,” is a song for the lonely and overwhelmed. Written in her tiny London, ON apartment, when she moved in “it was the very end of a rainy and grey December,” says Jenny. “The bathtub had a terrible leak that was an ever-present soundscape. The bright vibraphone (Dan Edmonds) and guitar (Clayton Linthicum) contrast the textures created by the synth and Kacy Anderson’s voice. Together, they create a soundscape that matches the lyrical examination of sadness and hope."

WATCH / SHARE “YOU THINK YOU’RE LIKE THE RAIN” HERE

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MORE ABOUT THESE ARE THE SOUNDS LEFT FROM LEAVING
“Kaleidoscope”, is a dissonant and poetic consideration of the importance of care and precision in language, both in the broader political landscape and in intimate emotional ways. From the heart-wrenching confusion of interpersonal manipulation, it extrapolates a collectively felt disorientation at the kaleidoscopic swirling of disinformation and misinformation. “Lavender City” is a more intimate look at lies. A breakup song with crescendo-ing strings, insistent percussion, and hopeful harmonies, it’s about gaining the capacity to see clearly again – but with the painful entailment of anatomizing the lies that drew you in. Looking beneath them to see what’s inside.

Songs like “July” and “Just Like A River” embody a similar dichotomy but feel more like mellow meditations; they are recreations of moments where small, specific reveries gave way to more sprawling contemplation–but in an appreciably peaceful and illuminative way. “July started as a tiny chorus written for somebody I thought I could maybe love someday,” Jenny says with a smile, in a conversation about the seeds of the album’s singles. “It was a hot summer, one that reminded me of being a small child in the middle of July in southwestern Ontario. It’s a love song, but it’s also a nostalgic song that expresses how memory shifts and shapes you, and how the stories we tell become who we are.” 

“I wanted the songs to feel like living creations that capture a living moment,” says Jenny about envisioning the recording process. “I wanted that theme of big fears in small spaces to be heard and felt as a coexistence of intimacy and menacing permeability.” Recorded live off the floor at the Sugar Shack with engineer Simon Larochette, the album sparkles with its intended intricacies. Musically, it feels both close and expansive. Each song unfolds like a widening web of poetic associations, narrated by nostalgic piano, pondering strings, glittering guitars—and Jenny’s hauntingly immersive vocals. At times, songs end with an unravelling, the music splintering apart into disintegration like a lingering open question. Warm and dark, soft with stabs of madness, These Are The Sounds Left From Leaving is a cohesive collection of spare songs that bloom lushly with detail. 

Whether you’re reading Jenny’s poetry—in her debut chapbook Grease Dogs with Baseline Press — or listening to her songs, you’ll experience her drawing layers of far-reaching concern into particular moments, like concentric waves rippling inward toward a lone cast stone. These Are The Sounds Left From Leaving showcases the perspective of a unique storytelling artist, with an evocative practice that hinges powerful narratives on the intricacies of a multifaceted musicality. A songwriter immersed in poetry, a poet immersed in music—her work in all its forms is an invitation into a world of relatable introspection, in which even absences can be sculpted into vividly memorable verse. 

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THESE ARE THE SOUNDS LEFT FROM LEAVING
01 Just Like A River
02 Kaleidoscope
03 Watch You Fade
04 July
05 Lavender City
06 Under A Sky
07 You Think You’re Like The Rain
08 Invisible You
09 Song Of Yourself
10 Here Comes The Morning

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YVES JARVIS SHARES CHAD VAN GAALEN ANIMATED VIDEO FOR NEW SINGLE

“Prism Through Which I Perceive” Video Still

Today, Yves Jarvis has shared a colourful, psychedelic video for the new track “Prism Through Which I Perceive”, animated by fellow Flemish Eye artist, Chad Van Gaalen. Jarvis calls the song a “mandatory prism sentence…I calibrate and blitz forthwith.” 

Van Gaalen says of the video, “Quantum spellcheck guides the pen through this rhythmical visual. 'Prism through which i perceive' a quote from a master chef, shrink wrapped in the wav file. Zoom in and zoom out but always zooming, always morphing. Evolution of endless thoughts and the language that is indeed creating reality as we know it. These shapes come from the song!!! It's me, CVG transposing the vibrations of YJ. Lucky to be able to put on this suit and walk for a bit.”

“Prism Through Which I Perceive” Single Art // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Last June, Jarvis and his partner Romy Lightman released their debut album, Banned, under the moniker Lightman Jarvis Ecstatic Band. 

BUY / STREAM BANNED HERE

“This album is a loose manifesto in our shared vision for a way of being,” said Lightman. “It’s about our relationship and the dynamics in that. There’s an epic-ness to it and tension at times. We’ve been developing our collaborative process since spending our time together at the Tree Museum intermittently for the past two years. It’s like the ways particles collide. There’s an alchemical aspect to it with these base components slamming together.”

This spring Jarvis is going on a North American tour with Andy Shauf with stops in Montreal and Toronto in April. Full tour dates can be found below.

Photo Credit : Yves Jarvis  // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

TOUR DATES
2/17 – Sheffield, MA – Racebrook Lodge
2/18 – Woodstock, NY – Colony SOLD OUT
2/19 – Hamden, CT – Space Ballroom
2/20 – Charlottesville, VA – The Southern Café and Music Hall
2/23 – Asheville, NC – The Grey Eagle
2/24 – Birmingham, AL – Saturn
2/26 – Orlando, FL – The Social
3/1 – Houston, TX – The Heights Theater
3/3 – San Antonio, TX – Paper Tiger
3/4 – Fort Worth, TX – Tulips FTW
3/5 – Oklahoma City, OK – Beer City Music Hall
3/8 – Tucson, AZ – 191 Toole
3/9 – Solana Beach, CA – Belly Up Tavern
4/5 – Montreal, QC – Theatre Corona
4/6 – Toronto, ON - History


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