Music from PIQSIQ features in new Apple TV+ series

The soundtrack for a new Apple TV+ series features voices that may be familiar to some northerners.

The Last Frontier premiered on the streaming service with two episodes on October 10.

The thriller drama follows a US marshal working in the outskirts of Fairbanks, Alaska, after a prison transport plane crashes in the wilderness, setting free multiple fugitives.

Inuit throat-singing sisters PIQSIQ – Tiffany Ayalik and Inuksuk Mackay, who have roots in Nunavut and grew up in Yellowknife – contributed music to the show.

The song Converge, from PIQSIQ’s 2021 album Live from Christ Church Cathedral, appears on The Last Frontier’s soundtrack. The duo also worked closely with composer Ariel Marx, contributing vocals and throat-singing to the original score.

“It’s so exciting. Soundtracking is something that we really, really enjoy doing and are looking to get into doing more,” Mackay told Cabin Radio.

“It’s just cool. Like it’s Apple TV, it’s fun, it’s cool, it feels like a big deal, and it’s set in the Arctic, which makes it even more fun.”

“We’re stoked that this is available on Apple TV,” Ayalik added.

Ayalik said she hopes people will be “a bit surprised” by the types of things PIQSIQ is doing, noting they are far-reaching in terms of the types and styles of music they can create.

While scoring TV is a different type of work for PIQSIQ, Ayalik said it is in line with their live shows.

“Our live shows feel very cinematic and they feel like this adventure, this journey,” she said. “That’s the feedback we get from people that see our shows. So it’s fun for us to take that and put it into a screen-based medium.”

While The Last Frontier is based in Alaska, it was largely filmed in Quebec and Alberta.

It stars Jason Clarke as US marshal Frank Remnick alongside actors Haley Bennett, Simone Kessell, Dallas Goldtooth, Dominic Cooper, Tait Blum, Alfre Woodard and Johnny Knoxville, among others.

Although the series does not star Inuit characters, Mackay said it’s a demonstration of good faith when projects incorporate people from the community rather than just being extractive.

“We’re a pretty underrepresented community and I think a lot of folks want to capitalize on the beauty and the vastness of the Arctic and maybe not necessarily incorporate voices from that place,” she said.

Mackay added that Apple TV was respectful when PIQSIQ denied their request to create a song library for sampling, after discussing the matter with other people in the throat-singing community, and agreed to just record parts that would be used in the score.

“If anything, that shows there is a way for Inuit, for Indigenous people to be in these mainstream spaces and still have their integrity and still stand by their cultural values,” she said.

“It’s way more challenging. Sometimes I wish it was easier for us and we could just go in and not have to ask ourselves all these questions and not get asked all these questions, but that’s the reality that we navigate.”

PIQSIQ also created the score for the film Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband), which is set to open this year’s Yellowknife International Film Festival.

Directed by Zacharias Kunuk, the Inuktitut-language historical drama is about an arranged marriage 4,000 years ago. The film is set to screen at the Capitol Theatre in Yellowknife on Wednesday, November 5 at 6:30pm.

PIQSIQ is now headed to Finland to attend WOMEX or the Worldwide Music Expo, which hails itself as “the most international and culturally diverse music meeting in the world” and the biggest conference of the global music scene.