A Closer Listen
To whom does land belong? This simple question lies at the root of many of the world’s problems: border disputes, genocide, war. When one orders a physical copy of this cassette, one receives a sample of land, as the cloth is dyed in mud from Harare, which was once called Salisbury when it was occupied by British South Africa, a problematic name to say the least. The mud was taken from the area in which the Zimbabwe flag was planted in 1980, as the region became part of the independent Republic of Zimbabwe.
If one is wondering where the record is, there’s only one, as shown below. The record was first part of an installation in Edinburgh. Thanks to that record and its brethren, the cassettes sent around the world, and a countless number of digital editions, the land now speaks to the entire globe. But what does it say? Field recordings, voices and turntables mingle to produce a meditation on migration and place, beneath which plays the sound of the land itself.
© Eoin Carey
Soil Leaf Root is a single longform piece, proceeding patiently from segment to segment. Native voices introduce the piece; but even they are not the original inhabitants. Did protozoa once claim the land? When all of Earth was submerged, did territorial fish set boundaries? The soil remains impassive, but even soil moves, mud to water, water to stream, stream to sea. A ceremonial bell rings, and as ambient music rises in the background, a congregation joins in prayer.
The ambience shifts to drone as the turntables begin to turn, excavating their own etched grooves, the repositories of memory. A slowed song invites a slurred dance. “What goes on? I really want to know.” The song loops, slides and morphs before dissolving in a static mass. Soon one can only hear the pop of the needle against the label. This allows an exercise in mindfulness to emerge, led by a different narrator, her echoed voice set against a wall of distortion.
A series of glissandos falls like stars. When scat singing emerges, it’s hard to place the location or generation, which is part of the point. Save for the borders between land and sea, boundary lines are arbitrary. Masimba Hwati and Paul Nataraj use sound to obscure aural boundaries: live and recorded, current and ancient, ambient and drone. The music is a metaphor for the message. The non-human sound ~ diamond across mud ~ creates its own hauntology. After everyone involved in this recording is gone, indeed after humanity itself has gone the way of the dinosaur, the diamond and mud will remain. And whose land will it be then? (Richard Allen)
Wed Oct 15 00:01:18 GMT 2025