PREMIERE: Stream Silver Jackson's New Album "Starry Skies Opened Eyes"

Silver Jackson's remarkable new album, Starry Skies Opened Eyes, bursts with life and an artful spirit of experimentation. Welcome to the future-now sounds of Indigenous expansion.

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.

STREAM: Silver Jackson - "You and I Should Try Again"

We are thrilled to have the exclusive debut of a new single from Silver Jackson. That's right, you heard "You and I Should Try Again" here first.

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:

VIDEO: Pamyua - "Bubble Gum"

Bubble Gum is the new irresistibly joyful video from Pamyua.

Bubble Gum is a drumsong off of Pamyua's double album SideA/SideB. The album is a collection of Inuit drumsongs primarily sung in the Yup’ik and Cup’ik language from Southwestern Alaska. Interestingly disc 1 of SideA/SideB features drumsongs performed traditionally with only vocals and drumming where as disc 2 features the same songs but with different world music arrangements, offering a new way to enjoy and approach Inuit music.

This playful and infectious video was filmed in Unalakleet by the Anchorage-based film collected Electric Igloo Creative, Bumble Gum was made thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign. Congrats to everyone involved!

Watch: "Bubble Gum" - Pamyua

VIDEO: Pamyua - "Tundra Chant"

The music of Pamyua showcases the drumsongs from the Inuit cultures of Greenland and Alaska and this song, Tundra Chant, that serenades the northern landscape is as beautiful as the land it sings to.

A handful of Pamyua songs are featured on the new soundtrack for Discovery's Flying Wild Alaska (get the soundtrack here) and this video features stunning footage from the series. Enjoy.

Watch: Pamyua - "Tundra Chant"

DOWNLOAD: Strummin' Dog - "Locked Into Something"

Despite being born and raised in the Alaskan town of Sitka, Strummin' Dog (aka Dave Galanin, father of Nicholas Galanin) plays the blues like he's from down the bayou. His newest album, Signify, is a mix of original tunes and his own spin on works by the greats like Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson and Charley Patton. Locked Into Something is a Strummin' Dog original and it has me feeling my East Van desk chair is leaned back in a smokey blues bar, or maybe rocking on a Southern porch... either way it's just what you want from the blues - hazy, hot and hitting the low notes of your soul with a steel guitar and a rich deep voice.

You can get Signify at CDBaby, Bandcamp and iTunes.

 DOWNLOAD: Strummin' Dog - "Locked Into Something"

VIDEO: Silver Jackson - "On a Boat"

The new album from Silver Jackson is being released tomorrow! Last week, RPM brought you the preview track Our Love. Today we share the new video On a Boat. 

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.