Mokuy

Two years on from their exquisite self-titled 2021 debut album (five stars in #172), the Hand To Earth ensemble – a renamed offshoot of the Melbourne-based Australian Art Orchestra – returns with another chapter of this very creative project.

Led by ex-AAO Musical Director, trumpeter-producer Peter Knight, along with traditional Indigenous Yolngu songman-singer Daniel Wilfred, and his yidaki (didgeridoo)-playing brother David Wilfred, the quintet also features experimental South Korean vocalist Sunny Kim and Australian clarinettist-sound artist Aviva Endean.

The group explains that their music ‘is not free improvisation but it is not composed either… somewhere in between… it feels like ‘weaving’… of our different histories, different lives, and different perspectives together.’

Utilising Wilfred’s ancient manikay (public songs) as their basis, and sung in his first language, Wagiläk, the two new long tracks here – ‘Watu’ and ‘Wata Dhärranhaynu’ – gently unfold, with layers of voice, instrumentation and production blending organically and quite seamlessly. The title-track is a lovely ambient sound excursion.

Hand to Earth continue to fascinate and successfully combine ancient time-honoured tradition with a thoroughly contemporary aesthetic.