Traveler’s Ode (2019)
Sung-Poetry/Music Performance Video
9 min.
Music/Words/Sound Design: Dao Strom
A live recording of “Traveler’s Ode” filmed at Satsop Power Plant, Cooling Tower 3, Elma, WA.
Published as a multimedia/video poem by Poetry Northwest, 1/21/19.
Showcased in Cadence Video Poetry Festival, NW Film Forum, 4/3/19.
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Video Credits :
Director: Roland Dahwen/Patuá Films
Director of Photography: Edward P. Davee
Sound Recordist: sidony o’neal
Mixing: Dao Strom; with additional tape processing by Jim Han
Mastering: Timothy Stollenwerk
With special thanks to Kyle Macdonald
Traveler’s Ode (9-song album, 2020)
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TRACKLIST :
1. traveler’s ode
2. [interim]
3. [i stayed]
4. i have traveled
5. activator
6. wading into a new decade (…) forty-five years after the exodus
7. carry/catalyst I
8. carry/catalyst II
9. re-membering
Dao Strom’s Traveler’s Ode is an interwoven series of textured, ethereal song-poems. Atmospheric yet weighted, minimalist yet lush, the album combines voice, electronics, piano, guitars, and field recordings from sources such as rivers, sea, jungle, and birds to create a deeply emotive song-cycle that explores themes of displacement, diaspora, and hauntings. Echoing the work of artists like Tara Jane O'Neil, Grouper, Black Belt Eagle Scout, and Tiny Vipers. Released by Antiquated Future Records in conversation with her hybrid poetry-art book, Instrument, on Fonograf Editions.
Available as digital & cassette from Antiquated Future Records
ALBUM credits
released September 25, 2020
All songs/poems written, recorded, mixed by Dao Strom.
Mastering by Timothy Stollenwerk.
Also with: onsite recording on “traveler’s ode” by sidony o’neal, additional tape processing by Jim Han.
Vietnamese fragments on “traveler’s ode/[interim]” translated & read by Nhã Thuyên & Ly Thuy Nguyen.
Vietnamese fragments on “re-membering” translated & read by Ly Thuy Nguyen.
“traveler’s ode” was recorded at Satsop Power Plant, Elma, WA.
“i have traveled” was recorded in the Biopol studio at Nes Artist Residency, Skagaströnd, Iceland.
Field sounds on “wading…” recorded between Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng and Hội An, Việt Nam.
Birdsong on “re-membering” recorded in the home of Isabelle Thuy Pelaud.
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"gorgeously layered dark ambient folk soundscapes with a heavy sense of foreboding." - Bandcamp New & Notable
"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." - Various Small Flames
"This music is dense with shadows, but it’s also presented with great clarity, like the startlingly vivid clopping sounds at the beginning of 'i have traveled.' It has the precision of poetry, and like poetry it rewards close attention." - Underscore Magazine
"Dao Strom utterly embodies the paths she treads, soaking in the interactions she has with people and places and internalizing it for rumination later. It actually seems to have become a part of her – over ethereal instrumentation (recalling, among others, Julee Cruise and Grouper’s Liz Harris), Strom sings lullabies in a hushed voice that barely stick to the physical plane, becoming mist and memory as soon as the words pass her lips. All devolves into light particles and drifts into the sky." - Cassette Gods
