Good vibrations

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This article was published 07/06/2025 (422 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Laraaji, an ambient music legend, and Zoon, the local progenitor of a genre called moccasin gaze, will join cosmic forces on Sunday to close out the Cluster Festival of New Music + Integrated Arts.

“With Laraaji, you never know exactly what’s going to happen,” says Zoon, a Polaris Prize-nominated artist from Brokenhead Ojibway Nation who has toured with Jeremy Dutcher and lives in the Luxton neighbourhood, where they’ve set up Olson Waves, a home recording studio named after his father.

Since releasing Celestial Vibrations, his debut album, in 1978, Laraaji, who turns 82 this year, has cultivated an otherworldly reputation spanning musical universes.

In 1979, famed ambient artist/producer Brian Eno has recalled, he came across Laraaji, cloaked in orange, crafting soundscapes from his autoharp in New York’s Washington Square Park. As the story goes, Eno slipped his contact information into the collection basket and invited the artist to record with him.

Records such as Celestial Vibrations and Ambient 3: Day of Radiance, the first record Laraaji produced with Eno, made him not just a musician, but a musical hero to Zoon, so when the Manitoban artist first had the opportunity to play with the Philadelphia-born Laraaji (born Edward Larry Gordon), the excitement was palpable.

Invited to Pawtucket, R.I.’s Machine with Magnets recording studio, Zoon walked into what would become a 24-hour recording session the artist will never forget.

“Laraaji was already set up with his zither,” recalls Zoon, who uses they/them pronouns and whose other musical projects include acclaimed alt-rock group Ombiigizi.

Wanting to get as close as they could, Zoon set up their Omnichord (an electronic instrument that mimics strings) right next to Laraaji, and the two quickly vibed. A tour, orchestrated by Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, another mutual friend with Winnipeg ties, soon followed.

“By the end of the tour, (Laraaji) was like, ‘Here’s my card. Call me if you need anything or if you’re in Harlem,’” recalls Zoon, who was formerly known as Daniel Monkman but now prefers Zoongide’ewin, which means “courage” in Ojibway.

Earlier this year, the 33-year-old Zoon — whose forthcoming recordings include collaborations with Laraaji, several members of Broken Social Scene and Julie Doiron — recorded a two-song extended EP with the ambient legend.

“One song was like two hours long, and the other was about one hour long,” says Zoon, who is now working with No Fun Club engineer Riley Hill in Winnipeg to break the huge swath of music down into smaller components.

“We got the first song down to eight minutes, I think. Or was it 30? No, the second song is 30 minutes, and the first is, I think, 15. We’re in the process of finding one beautiful moment, finding another and then another and then combining them to create this collage.”

Zoon is also working on an upcoming record with Micah Erenberg of the Secret Beach. That album, which will follow the acclaimed 2023 release Bekka Ma’iingan, will be a protest album fuelled by disillusionment with the systems of the reservation they grew up on and their desire to blaze a clearer path forward, while reckoning with the inherited injustices of colonization, Zoon says.

The artist Zoon is listening to most at the moment is Bob Dylan; last weekend, the artist was transfixed by Dylan’s The Ballad of Ira Hayes, the closing song on the first side of Dylan 1973, which recounts the true story of a Native American marine from the Pima Nation who helped raise the flag over Iwo Jima. In March, the U.S. Department of Defence removed webpages about Hayes before reposting them without reference to his ethnicity.

Zoon’s immediate plans include launching an independent label based in the North End with a focus on Indigenous-made music and artist-led, stripped-back production.

Some new material could slip its way into Sunday’s performance, which opens with The River Between, a duet performance by saxophonists Olivier Macharia (Super Duty Tough Work) and Eamon Sheil.

When Laraaji is in town, Zoon, who will perform at the Winnipeg Folk Festival with Ombiigizi, will get some good use out of their house’s guestroom and kitchen.

“I asked him, ‘Laraaji, what kind of food do you want?’ and he’s vegan, so he sent me a list of things he wants and needs,” says Zoon, whose earliest forays into recording were inspired by lasting obsessions with Beck and My Bloody Valentine.

“I feel like I’m going to mess it up, but I’m going to try, so at least I can say I cooked Laraaji a meal.”

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca