Posts Tagged ‘home’

Fågelle – Bränn min jord

Posted: 27 February 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Self release – 27th February 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

‘Riv mig’ is so quiet at first you can hear slight shuffles during the introduction, but it builds, first with the vocal intensity, her voice cracking slightly, before the instrumentation explodes. Nothing could be more fitting for a song the title of which translates as ‘Demolish Me’, and the beefy electro groove at the start of the segmented and transitional ‘Before the Moths Get In’ is prefaced by a brief interlude in the form of ‘Skogsskrik 1’ which contains the faintest of ambience and a raw, primal scream. The title’s translation ‘Forest Scream 1’ is self-explanatory, and this seems like an appropriate point to delve into what Bränn min jord is really about.

In a sense, it’s about homecoming, but it’s also so much more. The accompanying notes are worth quoting at this point:

‘The inland of Halland, a patchwork of forests and abandoned mills in southern Sweden, is the backdrop for Fågelle’s most personal album yet… After years in Berlin and Gothenburg, she returned home — not out of nostalgia, but as an act of reclamation. She wanted to reconnect with the soil that shaped her and let something new grow from what had been left behind.

‘Bränn min jord (“Burn my soil”) grew from this process of renewal. Its title references the tradition of burning the ground to spark new life — a metaphor for the personal upheaval and rebuilding at the heart of the album. The music explores the tension of growing up somewhere you know you’ll have to leave, yet which keeps pulling you back. It speaks about identity, memory, and the hidden emotional landscapes of overlooked places.’

Here in England, we used to burn stubble in fields of corn and when after harvest. The practice was ended a good time ago for environmental reasons – the smoke and emissions were grim – and while the practice of heather burning on moorland continues, it’s been subject to significant reduction of late. We burn less soil, but still we do, and for the precise purpose of clearance and renewal. And there is much to be said for the power of the purge, the clearing of dead wood – and not just in the physical landscape.

Returning to a place can be difficult, too; reconciling the changes which have taken place, the difference between the past and the present. All of this feeds into the wide-ranging forms of this detailed, crafted album. ‘Det blev våra liv’ is unexpectedly poppy and light, but rather than feeling at odds with the main body of work, it feels like part of the natural flow of a work which is already rooted in nature.

The album’s form is shaped by brief interludes, with samples and fragmentary segments sitting between the ‘proper’ songs, and rather than interrupt the flow, they add to the depth of this exploratory work.

Title track ‘Bränn min jord’ is nothing short of epic: it’s poppy, but also operatic, cinematic, and essentially encapsulates the while of the album’s form in four dramatic minutes, and ‘Satans jävla fan’ is powerful and dense, worthy of comparison to Big | Brave, with whom Fågelle toured in 2022.

Bränn min jord is not an album which conforms easily to any specific genre. It’s expensive epic. It’s post-rock, but its more, so much more. But genre definitions are only so helpful anyway: what matter is that Bränn min jord is a great album, rich in emotional resonance and heavy atmosphere.

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Hand To Earth – Ŋurru Wäŋa

Posted: 28 July 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Room40 – 22nd August 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Sometimes, I will encounter a release, and while knowing that I need to cover it, I find myself paralysed by the discovery that I am completely out of my depth. This is never more common when presented with works which represent cultures from beyond my – embarrassingly small – sphere of knowledge. And embarrassing is the word. Doubtless some would steam in and opinion with an overflowing confidence which presents itself in perfect disproportion to their knowledge, but bluffers inevitably come unstuck sooner or later, and are shown up as the arrogant cocks they are. I’ve always been of the opinion it’s better to be open about those gaps in knowledge, accept that no-one can know everything, and take the opportunities which present themselves to gain some education.

During my first or second year as an undergraduate studying for a degree in English, one tutor commented that I had squandered almost half of the first page on ‘rhetorical throat clearing’ – a magnificent and amusing turn of phrase, which summarises something I’m still guilty of some thirty years later.

Anyway: the point is, when presented with Ŋurru Wäŋa, the new album by Hand To Earth, I find myself swimming – or somewhat sinking – at first. The accompanying notes set out how ‘A 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 their songs, and by doing that to create something new.’

Peter Knight (trumpet, electronics, synthesisers, bass guitar) goes on to explain that ‘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.’

The notes add that ‘The music Hand To Earth creates collisions between the ancient and the contemporary; between the ambient and the visceral.’

And indeed it does. Listening to Ŋurru Wäŋa is a transportation, and transformative experience, not entirely similar from watching a documentary soundtracked by the sounds of the peoples being documented. From the very first minutes of the spacious whispers and slow, elongated notes of ‘buish honey (guku)’ the lister finds themselves in another place, another space, another mind. It feels, in ways which are hard to pinpoint, let alone articulate, spiritual, beyond the body, but at the same time closer to the earth – closer to the earth than I have ever been or even understand how to become. I realise I have been, and become so conditioned that such senses are beyond me, likely eternally, but on listening to the ringing sounds – not unlike the droning hum of a singing bowl – and breathy incantations of ‘Ŋurru Wäŋa Part I’ and revisited in the dark, sonorous rumbling of ‘Ŋurru Wäŋa Part II’ which brings the album to a close.

In between, swerving drones and impenetrable utterances evoke another time, another place, far removed, something mystical. It’s the sound of nature, of forests, of grass, of sky, as well as of soul, of heart, exultation, of but also the sound of humanity in a form so many of us have lost, and lost our capacity to connect to. This is the music of life, and it swells and surges, it’s the sound of being alive, and celebrating its magnificence.

Under capitalism, we forget that we’re alive, we trudge along, under duress, hating every day. Making it through a day is the goal for the most part, our ambitions are tied to capital, to the drudge, to the eye on the promotion, but, mostly on the commute, the team meeting, to clocking in and out, to the wage, to the 9-5, the confines of the shift, the need to pay the rent… We are all so numb, so desensitised. We’re not even living, but merely existing. With Ŋurru Wäŋa, Hand To Earth sing of another life – and it’s another world, and one we should all aspire to.

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