My Review: Dao Strom - Redux

 My review

Dao Strom - Redux

When an embrace is circular it takes in all the areas of the mind: if we start from this consideration the body will have other sensations, will grasp intuitions and its perimeter will be infinite.

Because from the union of fragments the result cannot only be numerical but above all sensorial.

And this is where Vietnamese artist Dao Strom takes us with her latest musical film: to connect the senses with our eyes perpetually closed, letting us touch and see her magic at its best. 

The voice becomes a camera, with precise focus, without imperfections, all in the name of a precision that makes flowers grow and is able to serenely immortalise the poetry of her fingers on a guitar that, like an aurora borealis, succeeds in making us understand the intensity of the particles that descend from the sun to the Earth.

It can only be an enchantment that puts us on a flying carpet to go and kiss them one by one.

Her words are "clicks": they capture bodies and thoughts to perfume them with a soft fragrance destined for an instant that becomes eternal.

Her vocals are a 'click': she takes the spirituality that wanders in the celestial vault and brings it closer, inside our senses, to wrap it in poetry.

The images she uses in her beats are "clicks" that follow the path of the class conjugated to the mystery, to make us children in front of the first amazement.

Because of its beauty, the album needs some advice to be listened: it would be good to sit on the floor, with a candle near your feet, the lyrics in front of your eyes, to read them before each song, to let them slide on the floor, to close your eyes and leave the window open: all the heaviness of living will take that direction to make you lighter.

And amongst those grooves are rows of connections that push towards an identity which changes to become an experience of absolute benefit.

The atmospheres are majestic and epic without the presence of many instruments: this is one of the qualities of the artist who now lives in Portland, but who seems to have retained the oriental spirituality of her native country.

With Redux Dao embraces the world to remove the exaggerated flames of this agitated moment in order to turn it into a gentle wave swollen with sunlight.

These are tracks capable of creating contact between the spiritual side that we have no time or desire to know and that of a silent journey of our secrets left alone. It is as if you are driven to consider that certain music has the power to silence the crowd of events that dwell in established but harmful habits.

A record that offers redemption, the softness of a discipline that has nothing to do with religious knowledge and faith.

The benefit is not immediate: patience is needed and, like an anti-wrinkle cream, the effects will be seen over time. But the skin of our consciousness, with this album, will find what science cannot make feasible: eternity.

We find water in the desert and there is no confusion on the city streets, the beaches are heat and air playing at love like ageless adults...

Being shocked by what is not there opens doors that have always been closed, she, unarmed but a healthy bearer of proposals, performs the miracle that perhaps even the son of God never considered possible.

We listen to notes that empty the armed warehouses of our thoughts and we sit down, on that carpet, to learn the calm of the less dark and less known universe.

The songs

Like a long song that crosses the hills of time, the album lives on the sparkle of a guitar that arpeggiates and allows Dao's voice to rise as a spiritual guide or to become a modern storyteller, to show us her way of  photographing life by leaving it in motion... absolute genius. 

It starts with "Day That We Met" to leave us immediately enchanted between the bouncing guitar and her voice with an ethereal approach.

With "Only Angel" we know the depth of the sky and a film descends from the vault of heaven with her voice that like an angel protects us, with her vocals that know the low-high levels to cuddle us.

With "Caller of Spirit" everything becomes intense and liquid: we slip into the depth of time and its kindness takes with it bitter words with a smile... A melancholic atmosphere does not prevent us from seeing blue emotions in our hearts. And the supporting electronic part makes the song almost trip-hop.

If you want an old-fashioned Wenders film, "Jesus Darkness" could be the lead track. Echoes of Sinead O'Connor show up and the world gets smaller.

Life is a fairy tale: we are all still children, despite everything, and the divine "Everything That Blows Wrecks Me", is a timeless ballad that becomes the lullaby to put evil to sleep. With  the semi-acoustic guitar that places a killer arpeggio, vocals in the middle of the clouds and keyboards to make everything perfect.

If you want to photograph the soul and its congested lanes, here is "Inside": if Suzanne Vega were to choose a new muse, she would look inside this song: everything suspended, everything alive, and the delicacy that blows inside these dubbed voices that embrace fear.

And when things could be dramatic, "Ancestor" advances in our listening because those guitars of hers are two gentle slaps that take the space to quote the story told by Dao, here Queen of Wisdom.

Grey clouds advance to give space to the two guitars that seem happy inside a labyrinth with keyboards that keep them close and friendly. 

With "Motherbear" we are inside every tension that leaves itself to become a golden harpsichord, in the story of life that feeds itself.

If you need a snapshot of the past it would be better to keep it alive by leaving the door open: "Waking" is all that: the poetry of wisdom with angelic voices as a blessing.

And if there are secrets that could separate people, one cannot do without "Innocent" which concludes the album, leaving the certainty that in dialogue there is contact and therefore the possibility of resolving things. An arpeggio that comes from afar, blessed and precious, ancient folk that does not lose its beauty.

Everything ends up starting again: mobile photos to be taken again because a shot that blocks a moment is a killer. Dao has understood this and has made a miracle possible: it is to be protected...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld 

Salford

March 18th, 2022

https://open.spotify.com/album/5iCdBWl7jLOmvh1WbXiiut?si=srfUFE8TT1SyvjCAXLJheg

https://music.apple.com/gb/album/redux/1612298044

https://antiquatedfuture.bandcamp.com/album/redux