Za’ eeq al raml is a free layering of several recordings made in the deserts of Oman, Morocco, and the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, in turn blended with a short sample of a lullaby slowed down to the point of losing its recognizability.
Za’ eeq al raml is an Arabic expression meaning “shouting sand” and refers to the acoustic phenomenon produced by a particular vibratory state of sand dunes, resembling the presence of voices in the desert.
The choice to use a specific chant—innocent and childlike—is connected to its intrinsic qualities. The lullaby is the primordial form of musicality par excellence, the first sequence of phonetic assimilation, the sound of a threshold state, liminal, between wakefulness and sleep. Above all, it is a vocalization that operates almost at a subliminal, pre-linguistic, atavistic level—at times ancestral and universal.
They are both muted voices, without hierarchy, without memory, close to displacement, to estrangement, to drifting, and to a perceptual otherness.