Hand To Earth blends the restless spirit of improvised jazz with the timeless pulse of Yolŋu songlines.
Releasing on influential local label Room40, Ŋurru Wäŋa is a meditative, texturally rich offering. The album breathes with the listener, an abstraction of the ether. This seems fitting for the group of five. Yolŋu songman Daniel Wilfred and Korean vocalist Sunny Kim sit at the helm of the mix. Their voices merge, invoking a raki: the spirit that draws everything into unity, binding them and listeners in a shared, unseen web.
The title track unfolds in two distinct parts, each carrying its own delicate weight. Sunny Kim’s voice rises with quiet intimacy, breathing life into Yoon Dong Ju’s poem Another Home. In contrast, Daniel Wilfred’s voice sings in the Wáglilak language; raw and yearning, a heartfelt echo of history. Their voices create a dialogue between homelands, distant yet connected. The vocals sit atop a swelling sea of sound, a gentle veil of ambient and glowing orchestral light, radiating slow ripples that gently draw the listener deeper into the unfolding soundscape.
From different places, stories, and sounds, the Hand To Earth’s members come together. Weaving threads of old and new seeking a shared sense of belonging. Ŋurru Wäŋa, “the scent of home,” becomes their compass, a shadowed fragrance that dwells throughout the album. The music breathes with the spirit of the land itself – rising and falling, humming softly, a dance where memory and the present fold into one.
Words by Tommy Boutros