Dao Strom is an artist based in Portland whose work exists at a convergence of several art forms, encompassing literature, music and visual art. Strom uses what they describe as these “three voices—written, sung and visual,” to explore themes of history both personal and cultural, particularly around the sense of fragmentation and memory-haunting of diaspora and displaced peoples. Such themes are deeply personal for Strom, who left Vietnam for Northern California aged just two.
Her latest project is a double-header, a hybrid poetry-art book titled Instrument and a companion musical album, Traveler’s Ode, which is being released on Antiquated Future Records at the end of the month. What the label describe as “an interwoven series of textured, ethereal song-poems,” the album combines guitar, piano and Strom’s voice along with a plethora of electronics and field recordings to create something dreamy and delicate but powerful too, forever shifting and refusing to settle into a predictable pattern.
In anticipation, Dao Strom has released a single, ‘i have traveled’ which captures the essence of the project. Beginning with the sound of scuttling hoofs which offer a nod to the song’s sense of motion, gentle guitar soon peals from a minimal but lush and gauzy atmosphere, electronic eddies rolling in spirals through ambient clouds. Strom’s vocals are soft and composed and a little melancholy, but dig a little deeper into the lyrics and they reveal sharp sentiments.
I have traveled far in the company
of men with white skin
and eyes for the future
an they never could agree
on one way to say my name
