Taigaa

It’s a rare pleasure to find a band with a sound that is both truly original and entirely unconcerned with ‘fitting in’, a band on a quest totally immune to musical plagiarism and fame-hungry, money-shot compromise. Cue Taigaa!, a Brooklyn trio featuring G Wolf on vocals, fellow ex Butterknife Krush-er K.O.K.O on violin and keyboard, and Dusty Gold of More Teeth on drums. The band took their name from the word ‘taiga’, a vast region of coniferous forests just below the Arctic tundra and the largest terrestrial biome in the world. For readers unaccustomed to geographic terminology, a biome is essentially another word for ecosystem, and this organic, living language characterises Taigaa!’s music perfectly. Off is like nothing I’ve ever heard before, in the best possible way.
While they may echo the vocals of certain someones here and nod to certain cultural touchstones there, the cohesive sound captured on Off is Taigaa!’s own. Their skill lies not only in the sheer primal strength of their music, but also the art of blending sounds and styles into staggering, soul-waking combinations. Layering natural instruments, such as bongo drums and rattles, with electric keyboard melodies, the trio create a fantastic, jarring amalgamation.
Opening track ‘Meanwhile’ teams a weeping violin with an almost acid jazz drum rhythm, while ‘In The Decay’ melds jazzy trumpets with a hip-snaking African drum beat. G Wolf’s voice pours over every song with a mournful yet fiery strength – occasionally sounding a bit like Amanda Palmer – a perfect lead for the beating tribal rhythms that map out the living landscape of the album. Her narrative on the relentless, danceable electro melody of ‘Shark & Tiger’ weaves like an eerie Aesop’s fable, while the shamanistic chanting on ‘Off Off’ is unnaturally perfect when juxtaposed with an Armenian folk-inspired string melody.
Taigaa! clearly draw on world music styles but deconstruct and reinvent them with a modern aesthetic, adding dance-based time signatures and grunge-like beat patterns. The frequent animal imagery, in both lyrical content and song titles, heightens the organic, pulsing energy of the album to a point where the music itself seems to stalk and weep and devour. Off seems to actually throb and pulse like a heart - sinister and sorrowful, yet incandescent with primal force. With this sophomore effort, Taigaa! have daubed themselves out with the tribal markings of innovators: unique, disconcerting and deliciously strange.
Charlotte Richardson Andrews

- Wears the Trousers

Taigaa! is a rather unusual all-female band consisting in a singer, drummer, and a keyboardist, who also plays violin. The keyboardist - the main harmonic element in the band - played minimalist, looping melodies with a strong classical sound. Melodically, a lot of it reminded me of Jean-Michel Jarre, if that means anything to people. Bach, also. The drummer played in a style that was fairly idiosyncratic and really pretty cool. Some elements were a little rough around the edges but the energy was definitely there and they played some quite original music. Check out their new music video, "Deep Moustache."
- The Deli Magazine

"We play in 15 minutes at the Orchard Bar," she said, shoving a flyer into my airspace with measured impudence. My plan to see just this one other band at the Delancey (cough) had collapsed due to poor clock management, and I had decided to take it easy Wednesday night anyway, in advance of Thursday’s onslaught of shows. I was a free agent. The Orchard Bar had AC to combat the weirdly muggy weather. All this and a fascination with CMJ’s fringe-dwellers led me to 200 Orchard to see…Taigaa! (Include that exclamation point in its name!) The flyer-shoving woman was G Wolf (no relation—she doesn’t really look Jewish), who took the small stage more like 40 minutes later (sigh) with her two bandmates and proceeded to unfurl unusually primitive songs that had absolutely nothing to do with any trend or currently traded sound, and which also seemed not at all designed to increase the band’s fan base (though the trio probably wouldn’t mind). Above them on a screen ran loops of a variety of Asian films, including the manic Thai cowboy flick Tears of the Black Tiger and what appeared to be one of the most seriously awesome Tetsuo films.
The best thing about Taigaa! was how perfectly great the band members seem to feel their music is. This isn’t as weird as it sounds; G Wolf danced and engaged the audience like a pop star, punctuating beats with a raised finger or a clipped breath, as if the songs were the biggest, most natural-sounding hits ever heard—and they may well be, in her head. Hey, if you can dream it, be it. During a week when almost every musician is putting on airs of some sort, it’s doubtful any band will enjoy playing its music more than Taigaa! Cheers to them for doing it the right way. By Mike Wolf
- The Time Out NY Blog