We’ve written about Zoon (Zoongide’ewin, AKA Daniel Monkman) several times in recent months, with singles ‘Astum‘ and ‘Oil Pastel / Dope Sick‘ highlighting the themes of destruction and survival on EP Big Pharma. An exploration of “the enduring face of colonialism via the power and violence of the pharmaceutical industry,” as we described it, where entire communities are ravaged in small periods of time by the inequalities of an exploitative health industry. Against this backdrop, the EP becomes a lesson in survival and resistance, be it upholding languages otherwise hindered (as with ‘Astum’) or as an outlet for critique against the powers which enable such violence.
Not resting on the laurels of Big Pharma, Zoon is already back with brand new EP A Sterling Murmuration. Again out via Paper Bag Records, the release represents a continuation of the project set out previously. “A Sterling Murmuration as a body of work is material from ten plus years ago,” Monkman explains, “I then recorded these songs with my high school friends in Winnipeg but broke the record into a few different movements. Big Pharma was the first movement and this is the second.”
If Big Pharma offered a view of the contemporary issues facing Monkman’s hometown, the new EP suggests a tangible mode of resistance. “The title […] comes from the movement that a flock of birds do for safety from predators,” he says. “They use this technique for other reasons such as warmth at night, also to exchange information about feeding areas. I feel very connected to this concept, I see it in humans and how we need a strong community to protect each other.” If so much of the harm is caused and accentuated by isolation, then A Sterling Murmuration offers community as an antidote. A path to healing and sustainable progress which wards off predatory forces through an embrace of the common good.
Opener ‘Play Ground’ captures the mood of the release. One informed as much by a sense of compassion as its melancholy. “‘Play Ground’ was written in Winnipeg around 2010,” Monkman continues. “At that time I had just experienced a huge loss which was a close friend of mine. I returned to our hometown, Selkirk, Manitoba, to find some closure. One evening I visited the school that we attended together. I noticed so much change.” New buildings, new fences and lawns, the sense of progress masking not only the loss of familiarity but the underlying continuation of old means of power. “I saw both decay and a dying civilization clinging to rebuilding a crumbling empire,” he concludes. “But also beauty.” The gauzy shoegaze sound captures this in all of its nuance, and cements the Zoon voice as both a storyteller and social commentator.
A Sterling Murmuration EP, is out now via Paper Bag Records and you can get it from the Zoon Bandcamp page.