OMBIIGIZI is difficult to pin down. This collaboration between Anishnaabe noise artists Zoon (Daniel Monkman) and Status/Non-Status (Adam Sturgeon) is largely informed by their experimental music backgrounds, but it’s rooted in a strong pop sensibility that seems oblivious to the sonic chaos around it. The lyrics largely focus on their life experience as indigenous Canadians, but there’s something universal that speaks not just to what it is to be Anishnaabe, but what it means to be human. Both sonically and lyrically, it looks to their people’s history, but is firmly planted in the present, wrestling with the tension between ancient ways and the modern world.

They call it “Moccasin-gaze,” and that’s as apt a term as I can think of. The project’s name translates to “he/she is noisy,” and it is: every song features an amalgam of heavily effected guitars, loops, and layers of synths blanketing the often delicate but always charming pop songs that they offer up. I suspect that the production work of Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew had a big hand in this, given that project’s similar tightrope act between the two extremes.

But as much as Drew is mentioned in the press materials for this album, he’s definitely a supporting actor here, with glimpses of BSS poking through. For the most part, the project operates in a spaced out psych-pop soundscape similar to Flying Saucer Attack, Sung Tongs era Animal Collective, or a quieter, less abrasive Sonic Youth. Even at its noisiest, on tracks like “Residential Military” and “Burch Bark Paper Trails,” it remains gorgeous. But songs like the aching “Spirit In Me” or the chant-like “Yaweh” are especially rewarding.

Sewn Back Together by OMBIIGIZI

“Burch Bark Paper Trails” perhaps demonstrates the tension they live in the most clearly: “Birch bark canoe paddles onto the freeway / No turn signal, how to switch lanes?” Speaking later of his Potawatomi ancestors, he says, “I found you on my phone, and now I found you in the registry,” a poignant picture of reconnecting to a lineage that has been cut off and covered up for decades.

This excerpt from the liner notes says it better than I ever could: “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.” On Sewn Back Together, OMBIIGIZI does just that: it uses modern tools to tell ancient stories. And whether we can personally relate to those stories or not, they’re worth giving your attention to.

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