The final video for Starry Skies Opened Eyes trilogy is a collaboration between Diné filmmaker Dylan McLaughlin and Tlingit Unangax̂ artist Silver Jackson.
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One of our favourite releases of 2014, Silver Jackson's Starry Skies Opened Eyes is a bold imagining of an Indigenous future found in the reclamation of life and the rediscovery of present possibilities in the here and now.
Collaborating with Diné filmmaker Dylan McLaughlin, the Tlingit Unangax̂ artist has released an evocative black and white music video for the album's title track, "Starry Skies Opened Eyes".
Here's what he had to say about the clip and the album:
"Starry Skies Opened Eyes features" vocals from multidisciplinary Métis artist Moe Clark. The album was recorded over a three year period that saw Jackson narrowly escape death in a hunting accident, and traces his path to newfound perspectives on life through love and gratitude…friends and family.
Watch the video below and stream the full album, Starry Skies Opened Eyes, right here on RPM.
Silver Jackson - Starry Skies Opened Eyes (Pt. II) from Dylan McLaughlin
Leading up to the full fledged release of his brilliant sophomore album, Starry Skies Opened Eyes, Silver Jackson enlists help from some Sitka-to-Seattle-to-Brooklyn connections to find Budo taking the reigns on this bubbling, electronic remix of lead single "Perfect Mistake".
The track features sonic contributions from Iska Dhaaf (Benjamin Verdoes & Nate Quiroga) and OCnotes, with psychedelic visuals from the talented Christian Petersen of IWantYouStudio.
Budo flips the acoustic original into a loping, beat-based shimmering remix that sits comfortably next to the rest of the album's sonic experiments and electronic flourishes. Kick back and enjoy the ride.
STREAM: Silver Jackon's "Perfect Mistake" (Budo Remix)
Listen to all of Silver Jackson's Starry Skies Opened Eyes here and download the album from silverjackson.bandcamp.com.
Silver Jackson is the musical alias of multi-talented Tlingit/Aleut artist Nicholas Galanin, whose recent adoption into the rising art and music collective known as the Black Constellation represents both a bold progression of the "expanding now" he is developing alongside his interstellar kin—Shabazz Palaces, Erik Blood, THEESatisfaction, OC Notes, Nep Sidhu, Khalil Joseph and Maikoyo Alley-Barnes—and an emergent model of creative collaboration and community.
Starry Skies Opened Eyes, Jackson's second album, is an effortless evolution of his style and aesthetic, where electronic-inflected, acoustic folk experiments abound with clever melodic turns and spiralling harmonies, fading and swimming through percussive clicks, crackles, and looping rhythms.
Recorded over a three year period that saw Jackson narrowly escape death in a hunting accident, the album traces his path to newfound perspectives "on life through love and gratitude...friends and family".
Starry Skies Opened Eyes is a record of resonance, transformation and re-emergence—of Jackson "losing [himself] in the blackness between light", drifting through dark horizons, reflecting the sky. This introspective illumination unfolds in a dream-like flow of cosmia, echoing out over the album's 11 tracks.
From the ambient swirl of the album's title track, "Starry Skies Opened Eyes", to the implicit critique of colonialism expressed in "Lanáalx" (the Tlingit word for "wealthy"), Starry Skies Opened Eyes is suffused with a restless spirit of interconnected being. Jackson traverses the shifting sonics of this polyvocal landscape with melodic dialogue textured by a host of collaborators, including Samantha Crain, OCnotes, Benjamin Verdoes, Jesse Hughey, Erik Blood, and Catherine Harris-White.
As the album's loping, final track "From Another World" arrives, with the hopeful prose of guest vocalist THEESatisfaction's "Cat" (Harris-White), it becomes clear that this is "rugged unexplored terrain / yet the rain still washes it anew".
Starry Skies Opened Eyes is a brilliant addition to the expanding universe of the Black Constellation and a bright spark in dark times. It is the sound of a future-now, where Indigenous presence is an act of creation, continually being renewed.
Stream Silver Jackson's "Starry Skies Opened Eyes"
Starry Skies Opened Eyes is available for pre-order now and will be officially released on November 14, 2014.
The new track from singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and artist Silver Jackson is from his upcoming full-length album, From Another World Like Starlight. We already fell in love with the first track he shared - "Perfect Mistake" - and his latest single is a slow-rolling, moving, sweet and heartwrenching slice of downtempo about love and loss that features the rich vocals of another RPM favourite, Samantha Crain, and contributions from Seattle's Benjamin Verdoes of Iska Dhaaf, and hip-hop producer OC Notes.
Andrew Matson nailed it:
This song is back porch hip-hop, a fish you cannot grab. Swimming in a digital voicemail is a downtempo silvery thing, and it bumps. It’s a song about true love, feeling a type of way, being addicted to leaving, maybe turning a corner.
You'll agree. Get into the warm water now:
WATCH: Silver Jackon - "Elliot"
An anthem to keeping our culture alive D-Script speaks to a life lived in two worlds... from way up north! Awesome.
Featuring AKNatural, Madd Love and Swerv Merv.
Perhaps it's the number of guest producers, vocalists and musicians that Silver Jackson had contribute to the album, or perhaps it's part of his already varied artistic practice, but the sound is hard to pin down. Which is not to say it's lacking cohesion - the songs on the album keep each other good sonic company in their eclectic mix of electronic and acoustic sounds, samples, sung vocals and spoken pieces.
Download the album now from silverjackson.com. You'll be glad you did.
Tracklisting:
Watch this space tomorrow for the full track-listing and info on It's Glimmering Now, the new album from Silver Jackson.
Video by K.C. Bull.
This exclusive preview off of Silver Jackson's upcoming album It's Glimmering Now features production by OC Notes. Silver Jackson, aka multi-disciplinary Tlingit/Aleut artist Nicholas Galanin who's other musical project is Indian Nick, travels through both sparse and richly dense experimental psych-folk soundscapes.This track mixes a spacey sound effects with a plucking banjo line and layered vocals - a glimpse of the eclectic sound the new album is bound to explore. Download it, love it, get ready for more. DOWNLOAD: Silver Jackson - "Our Love"
Our host Ostwelve asks three emerging Indigenous artists about their use and creation of electronic music.
A Tribe Called Red - the Ottawa-based DJ collective of NDN (Nipissing First Nation), Bear Witness (Cayuga) and Shub (Cayuga) - describe what they're doing in the clubs as a cultural continuence from the powwow, and that the two are not that far apart after all.
Using small digital electronics, Cree electro-cellist Cris Derksen can make her cello sound like a bass, a drum, or even seagulls. Hear how she's creating a new palette for the usually classical instrument and how being a musician is like being a jeweler.
Nicholas Galanin, aka Indian Nick, a Tlingit/Aleut visual artist and musician from Stika Alaska, likens contemporary Indigenous electronic music to our history as strong adaptive communities and cultures, and finds the mixing of electronic with other forms of music comes naturally.
Yes ladies and gentlemen, this revolution has been electrified.
DOWNLOAD: RPM Podcast #010: "Electric Pow Wow"
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The RPM podcast is produced & engineered by the amazing Paolo Pietropaolo.
Photo illustration created by the talented Joi Arcand.
Just across our desk here today at RPM.fm, the Potlatch Music blog is a new blog site that compiles a large number of amazing potlatch videos from nations like the Haida, Nuxalk, Tlingit, Tsimshian, Nuu-chah-nulth, Nisga'a, Kwakwaka'wakw and Coast Salish peoples.
The potlatch is a ceremonial gift-giving festival that has been practiced since time immemorial on the northwest coast of Canada and the United States. In 1884, the potlatch ceremony was banned in Canada and became a criminal act until the 1950's when it started to make a resurgence in the northwest coast Indigenous cultures.
Now thriving within this resurgence, videos and other media have been circulating on the internet and the culture grows as the population of Indigenous nations grow as well. Like the powwow videos that hit YouTube on the Sunday night of the powwow, potlatch videos are showing the strong energy of co-creation through music and culture in these ceremonies.
A lot has changed in societ'y since the early to mid 1900's when Indigenous cultures were illegal and Indigenous people couldn't gather in more than a group of three without intervention of the authorities. Now Indigenous people can enjoy their gatherings as well as invite their loved ones remotely through the comfort of the internet.
The Potlatch Music blog features videos old and new, some from archival footage and more from the newer potlatches of today.
Here's a video from the 2010 Hobiyee Nisga'a New Year celebration's Chiefs entrance:
Hychga to Manik for letting us know about this blog site.
Do you have an Indigenous music blog or website you'd like to share?
Drop us a line at info@rpm.fm or leave us a comment below.
Revolutions Per Minute is a global new music platform, record label, and boutique agency for Indigenous music culture. RPM’s mission is to build a visionary community of Indigenous artists and to introduce Indigenous music to new audiences across Turtle Island and around the world. Our main site, RPM.fm, has featured the work of more than 500 Indigenous artists and shared their music across our social networks of more than 275,000 followers.
RPM Records is the first of its kind: a label for contemporary, cross-genre Indigenous music, run by Indigenous people. Selected by The FADER as one of “5 New Canadian Record Labels The Entire World Should Know”, RPM Records artists include Ziibiwan, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Exquisite Ghost, and Mob Bounce.
