Redux, revisited // 2026 (...)
Hello 2026 !
3.3.26
On March 2nd four years ago, I released an album, Redux, of songs from my past now reimagined/rearranged—songs I wrote in my early years of playing music, that I performed then in more of a country/alt-country vein, with acoustic arrangements; some recorded on my first two albums, some never recorded. In returning to these songs years later, recording and performing them on my own at home (a project I started initially during the pandemic), I found myself inhabiting the songs in new ways, experimenting with voice and layers and atmosphere. While the “bones” of the songs (chord progressions and melodies) have stayed mostly the same, in this process I was finding new ways of moving around in and through the songs, finding feelings and currents they still activated for me but that I would also articulate differently, now. The process of “redux”-ing has been, for me, an experiment with time and voice and trying to honor what feels ineffable yet continuous in these, and also hard to pinpoint or explain.
I mention Redux here now because these songs are, in their unexpected, unplanned way, surfacing again this year—the album will be reissued on vinyl this coming April, by an Italy-based label, Disasters By Choice. An invitation issued by music journalist and label owner, Salvo Pinzone, who happened to review my recent song-cycle, Tender Revolutions, for Blow Up Magazine, an Italian music magazine, back in November 2025. All of this has been such a lovely surprise, and also I do not know what will come of it, but I like the thought/hope of the songs traveling beyond my reach and maybe finding some new listeners in other places.
Redux was first released on cassette in 2022 by Antiquated Future Records, who also co-released Tender Revolutions (with Beacon Sound) in 2025; AF also released my 2020 album, Traveler’s Ode. I have to credit the generosity and ever-steady good-heartedness of Joshua Amberson, who runs Antiquated Future, for giving my music an outlet these past few years; it has been such a beautiful instance of DIY art community for me, with Andrew Neerman of Beacon Sound, too, whose musical curation I’ve been following for years. And my new thanks, now, to Salvo Pinzone and Disasters By Choice, for opening a portal on another shore for Redux—vinyl release date (Europe) is April 20th… Digital will be where it usually is, and via daostrom.bandcamp.com :-)
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I have been meaning (trying) to post some kind of update to this space for some time now—to re-cap 2025, then to greet 2026, or the Lunar New Year in February… and now it is March. I’ve been frankly having a hard time finding motivation to write self-promotion posts or talk about projects and such. It’s nothing new to say there is so much going on in the world at large that is destabilizing, or that these efforts of art feel small, or that they should be all the more important now, or that there are other ways we should be trying to engage, etc. All of this is equally true, and maybe at this moment I am still trying to calibrate something within myself, to prepare or repair or attune as needed... For now, what I know is this much: the small nourishments of voice, the relationships that are ongoing in my creative life and of course in my personal life, the long echoes that keep repeating and returning ~~~ are important to me and are some threads I know I will continue to wrestle/tend. <3
Some other updates, now that I am here…
In February, I was honored to play a short set at Derek Hunter Wilson’s release show for his new album, Sculptures, a beautifully atmospheric ambient/piano-based release from Beacon Sound. The show was in a very lovely space, Fumi, a shop of artisan and vintage goods, just the right kind of cozy atmosphere for an intimate show.
And in January, I did two events in Seattle for Yellow Songs, and alongside this got to celebrate A Mouth Holds Many Things, the hybrid-lit anthology I co-edited/co-curated with Jyothi Natarajan (as a De-Canon project, published in collaboration with Fonograf Editions) back in 2024. On January 30-31st in Seattle, I did a reading at Elliott Bay Book Company (still a dear favorite spot) with PDX poet-friends Steph Adams-Santos and Jennifer (JP) Perrine; and then a group installation/reading at Common Objects with Portland + Seattle contributors from A Mouth Holds Many Things. Readers included: Stephanie Adams-Santos, Aya Bram, Shin Yu Pai, Jenne Hsien Patrick, Jennifer Perrine, Sandy Tanaka. It was so very special to get to gather and share this event with everyone.
We had the delight of installing an altar of objects celebrating the creative/hybrid processes behind AMHMT; plus there were four listening/reading “stations” for the four chapbooks of Yellow Songs and the accompanying Nhạc Vàng EPs (from which derives the Tender Revolutions LP). I know this project has many parts/entry points and is not simple to explain, so I am also grateful to the collaborators, friends, and community who have been willing to go on this journey with me, and experience how the pieces interconnect, entangle, and interact ~~ which is very much a part of the project’s design as a whole... Special thanks to Amy Hirayama and Timothy Firth at Common Area Maintenance for hosting us so welcomingly; to Jenne Hsien Patrick for so lovingly setting up the installation and coordinating our CAM event; and to Anne de Marcken/3rd Thing for assisting with the install and stocking books and records :-)
The Yellow Songs books as objects have been produced with such beauty and care, courtesy of Anne de Marcken at The 3rd Thing, and are available either individually and/or as a 4-volume set ~ a poetry-as-art-book dream. Likewise, the Tender Revolutions song-cycle album is available (with special insert artwork) as a vinyl LP and/or digital from Beacon Sound, Antiquated Future, and/or The 3rd Thing websites. If you feel so compelled, you can find the entire project ~ 4-book set + LP ~ as a full bundled package from any of these websites.
The 4 EPs* that correspond with each of the Yellow Songs books are, in their entirety, available only digitally, and I’ve posted them here: Nhạc Vàng I-IV. (Digital download codes also provided with purchase of books from The 3rd Thing.) To clarify: there are a few songs on these EPs that did not make it onto the LP ~~~ including a special collab with my friends from No-No Boy (Julian and Emilia Saporiti) on a song called “Mother Lode” for Nhạc Vàng I; and a few more personal and spare guitar-based songs on Nhạc Vàng III… (If you know No-No Boy, you’ll know this is a special connection for me; if you don’t know Julian’s music, I suggest checking it out :-))
*a process note: This project was initially seeded in a four-part structure, as four movements or sets or discrete-yet-connected sequences of songs, that then morphed into a fifth element of sorts, once we decided to distill the songs down into one LP-length sequence for the album, Tender Revolutions. I wrote/assembled the chapbooks to respond to/connect with each EP, so the (musical) heart of the project lies here...
Other thanks & news…
I am honored to have received a 2025 Spark Award for Oregon Artists (from the Miller Foundation) for Interdisciplinary Literary/Media this year — it is truthfully a lifeline for me this year; I will be trying to take some time to write, to think and feel, and hopefully dig into some deeper veins of research and practice. I am humbled, grateful, relieved, honored to receive this award.
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Some other things are gently in the works, many unknowns still unfolding... I am writing this message, finishing it on a full moon lunar eclipse morning, sliding into Mercury retrograde, so surely I am probably forgetting something or some meaning will slip. I am still hoping to get to a place where I can share more writing in this space that is not just updates. To close, here is a poem I read recently—from Victoria Chang’s With My Back To the World—that made me ear-mark the page…
These lines feeling particularly instructive…
“…Agnes left some / lines uncovered on the / borders, showing us how / happiness is made. How / even happiness is made by / writing something down, / then leaving it exposed / for all to see …”
If you have read this far, thank you for following along & wishing you the best from the new (lunar) year’s fiery horse energies :-) xoxo