Yellowknifers Quantum Tangle used the weekend’s Indigenous Music Awards to reveal the addition of a third member to the group.
Tiffany Ayalik and Grey Gritt, who together won a Juno award for Indigenous album of the year in 2017, are now joined by Kayley Inuksuk Mackay as drummer, vocalist, and throat singer.
Inuksuk Mackay, whose family has roots in Nunavut’s Kivalliq region, grew up in Yellowknife and is known for throat-singing performances alongside Hovak Johnston as the Yellowknife Throat Singers. She has also worked as a project coordinator for FOXY, the Arctic sexual health and education non-profit.
“I was lucky enough to attend my first awards show with them and nervous doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt,” Inuksuk Mackay posted to Facebook following the Indigenous Music Awards. She had been rehearsing in secret with the group for several months.
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“Impostor syndrome has been super fun to manage,” she added. “But when we sing Tiny Hands and I come in with a third harmony on ‘home’, it’s real and I really do feel home.”
Making their first appearances as a trio, Quantum Tangle shot a video at the Indigenous Music Awards for their track Love Is Love. The video will make its debut on May 30.
Shelter As We Go, the album from which Love Is Love is taken, lost out to Indian City’s Here & Now for the Best Pop Album award at the ceremony in Winnipeg.
Jay Gilday’s Faster Than Light was nominated for Best Rock Album, a category won by Relic Kings’ Armoury.
