My mother grows angry, retribution will be swift, Tanya Tagaq growls near the beginning of "Retribution." The music video for the title track from her new album channels some of that rage into a visual treatment. The throat singer and a face-painted companion — a Greenlandic mask dancer named Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory, Tagaq told THUMP — take over an industrial setting for an audience of one wolf, and an animated moose. There's an element of body horror in their stuttered dancing, as well as a less visceral, but more pressing terror in the clip's overhead shots of decaying landscapes.
"The 'Retribution' video embodies the idea of nature being forced into unnatural spaces. It's about how one cannot remove the essence of life and instinct out of our bodies, no matter how debilitated this society becomes," Tagaq said. Watch above and check out Tagaq's Red Bull Music Academy lecture here.
