Label: Room40

前作に引き続き非常に素晴らしい!!Room40のレーベル主Lawrence English、コンポーザーPeter Knight、クラリネット奏者Aviva Endean、ボイスパフォーマー/ディジュリドゥDaniel Wilfred、Sunny Kimという、オーストラリアを拠点とする音楽家達による、自国のフォルクローレを現代的解釈にてリアライズするプロジェクトHand To Earth。太古のアボリジニをコンセプトとした前作同様、本作ではその延長にある"故郷"や"帰属意識"といった概念を探求、異なる出身地/異なる音楽的アプローチを持つメンバー5人で歌を共有し、それにより育まれた新しい絆を音として表現したもの。フォルクローレでありながらとても現代的という不思議な仕上がり。



Matte laminate, embossed and monochrome printed sleeve with insert card

A note from Peter Knight

Ŋurru Wäŋa traces notions of home, belonging, and displacement. In the two parts of the title track, Sunny Kim intones the words of Korean poet Yoon Dong Ju’s poem, Another Home, in counterpoint to Daniel Wilfred’s song, sung in the Wáglilak language. Ŋurru Wäŋa (pronounced Wooroo Wanga), translates as ‘the scent of home’, and as we travel we long for that fragrance, passing the bee, guku, making the bush honey while the crow circles calling overhead.

This theme - this search for a sense of belonging - is at the heart of what drives Hand to Earth, a group of five people, who come together from different backgrounds, different birthplaces, and different musical approaches to share our songs, and by doing that to create something new. The six tracks on this album map our respective journeys into the now and express the connections that have developed within Hand to Earth over the years we have travelled and played together.

We each have our own relationship to this place, its difficult history, its contended present, its clouded future. This music is perhaps a way of thinking through this, written in the scribble of electronics, in the sighs of the clarinet and trumpet, in the broad brush strokes of the yidaki, and the snap of the bilma.

The songs that sit at the heart of Ŋurru Wäŋa were recorded mid-tour on a day off in Melbourne. Daniel had a spontaneous urge to record songs from the song line of Djuwaḻpada who is an important figure in Wägilak dreaming. Djuwaḻpada walked through the land starting in Daniel’s country, Nyilipidgi, in central Arnhem Land and ending at the coast at Lutenbuy singing the place and everything that lives there into existence. Daniel’s song cycle traces the flight of the birds, the Mäḏawk and Wäk Wäk. It describes the seasons, and the Stringybark tree, Gaḏayka, that supplies the bark for painting, and the wood for the bilma (clapping sticks).

With the exception of The Crow, which was recorded in New York, these songs landed in single takes in one session recording just the voice, bilma, and yidaki with some synth drones and other materials. The rest of the sounds came later in separate iterative recording sessions, in which the settings for the songs were developed through spontaneous layering and rubbing back.

This process reflected the approach we take to live performance but stretched across time, our voices calling to one another. Creating connections - resonating, blurring, vibrating.