Tender Revolutions [LP]

Dao Strom - Tender Revolutions [LP]

Expansive and ambitious, Tender Revolutions is the latest from Vietnam-born, Portland, Oregon- based multimedia artist Dao Strom. A fluid album, existing between genres -- part ambient folk, part sound collage, part spoken word, part post rock -- it blurs the line between the work of an experimental composer and the work of an accomplished singer-songwriter. Instruments slip in and out (guitar, piano, synthesizer, strings, drums, percussion) amid field recordings and samples, all anchored by Strom's singular voice. The songs of Tender Revolutions reflect on and embody themes of "yellow subjectivities" the Asian body as perceived; the Asian feminine body as reflection/catalyst/consort -- offering their own forms of response to troubling representations of Asian women in popular media in the West. A "re-voicing" of the problematic hit song "China Girl" by David Bowie re-inhabits this song from a discomfiting silence at its center, and serves as a fulcrum point in the album's sequencing. Other songs utilize voice as both texture and lyric-driven telling to deepen angles of interiority and thematics of voice/silence. While Tender Revolutions stands alone as its own whole, it also exists as part of a larger multifaceted project, drawing from a four-part song-cycle (Nhạc Vàng 1-4) and accompanying a series of hybrid-genre literary chapbooks (Yellow Songs 1-4). Released in collaboration with The 3rd Thing, an interdisciplinary publisher in Olympia. 01. Tender Variation I [What Is Tender]_x000D_ 02. Tender Variation II [When Was The First Time You Felt Loved]_x000D_ 03. Tender Variation III [Associations Of Yellow]_x000D_ 04. Tender Variation IV [Love Object Treason]_x000D_ 05. China Girl_x000D_ 06. Take_x000D_ 07. Owe Own_x000D_ 08. How Many Wars_x000D_ 09. [Hailing Tender]