Announcing symbiont, a collaborative and defiant work of Indigenous and Afrofuturist folklore by Jake Blount & Mali Obomsawin. symbiont is available for pre-order now, and will be released digitally and on CD and LP on September 27th. symbiont is available for pre-order here.

An album in two acts, symbiont is a dialogue with the ancient and anterior. The listener is met with rising tidewaters, massive droughts, and the appearance of an iconoclastic uprising amidst the world’s indifference. Questions of future or present tense swirl as the duo unspools the intertwined threads of racial and climate justice. The artists write: “Climate change’s many consequences travel like smoke, imperiling bodies and communities as surely as they shroud the sky. The music of symbiont is an attempt to join our peoples in sound and movement as we stave off death together.”

Blount is a renowned interpreter of Black folk music recognized for his skill as a string band musician and for his unprecedented Afrofuturist work in sound archives and song collections. In his hands, the banjo, fiddle, electric guitar and synthesizer become ceremonial objects used to channel the insurgent creativity of his forebears. Obomsawin (Odanak First Nation) is a celebrated composer and bassist-vocalist in free jazz and experimental music. Known for her evocative and ground-breaking debut Sweet Tooth, Mali’s work as a composer and bandleader centers on the imprint of Indigenous music traditions in jazz and “American” genres, using historical, archival, and community research as a spine for improvisation. Deerlady, Obomsawin’s shoegaze project with guitarist Magdalena Abrego, released music in early 2024 and has quickly won over young punks and sadgirls across Indian Country—cinching Mali’s reputation as an artist uncontainable by genre.