It seems significant that Ombiigizi named their 2022 debut “Sewn Back Together.” The Ontarian duo of Adam Sturgeon and Daniel Monkman created the project as a fusion of Sturgeon’s noise-rock outfit Status/Non-Status (formerly WHOOP-Szo) and Monkman’s shoegazing solo project Zoon, with the result being an experimental batch of songs swaying back and forth between each individual band member’s personal conceptions of post-punk and dream-pop. While it’s yet to receive a street date, the duo is beginning to tease that record’s follow-up, Shame, which they view as being a bit more tightly composed than their debut. “It shows that we’ve learned from our new experiences,” Sturgeon shares. “We’ve both gained so much knowledge from the recording of our first album, and it really shows with this album.”
For now, they’re sharing the record’s first single, “Connecting,” which perfectly illustrates their union—seams and all. The single’s first half takes the form of choppy space-rock before the vocals in the later half of the track take things off the rails a bit. “I feel like at one time or another, each person, in their own lives, has had to reconnect with something from the past in order to gain some kind of enlightenment—a way to either push through an addiction or reconnect with your heritage,” explains Sturgeon, an Anishinaabe Native. “In my own experience, it took me accepting my culture and not seeing it as a shameful thing, that actually helped me evolve out of a life full of addictions.”
Going deeper on the song’s meaning, he continues: “Today we’ve seen a new word called ‘pretendian,’ where some folks have taken advantage of the system and some were raised in the culture and land because their parent was told by their parent about some Native blood. And others are ‘reconnecting,’ which is also very difficult when knowledge and community is lost. So a bit of that, to me, is in this song, because it’s a difficult path to navigate sometimes. In my experience, one decade people are telling you to hide your Native blood, and in this one people are praising it. I’ve experienced both in my lifetime.”
Regarding the forthcoming album, Sturgeon also elucidates on how these themes play into Shame in a broader sense. “I feel like shame and frustration with this system is all over this album. I think these themes will always be represented in our musical endeavors, for many more years. I truly believe in passing down knowledge in any way you can, and ours is music. We want to share with other Native folks that it’s safe to explore more sounds and feel represented in a cool and innovative way.”
Check out the video for “Connecting,” which mines a similar early-’70s surrealist animated sci-fi aesthetic as Fantastic Planet, below.
