Dao Strom’s “re-voicing” of David Bowie’s “China Girl” is the most striking moment on Tender Revolutions, where she confronts the song’s troubling legacy head-on by stepping directly into what she calls its “discomfiting silence at its center.” Rather than simply covering or critiquing Bowie’s problematic hit, Strom inhabits the space where an Asian woman’s actual voice and perspective should have existed all along. At the heart is Strom’s timeless guitar plucks and voice, pulled to the center and unobscured, while processed field recordings and synthetic noise attacks add darker textures that imbue the stark sonic landscape with life. By reclaiming the sonic territory and centering her own subjectivity, she transforms a song rooted in fetishization and Orientalist fantasy into something deeply personal and truthful. It’s a powerful act of sonic reclamation that builds a world centering her perspective rather than the Western male gaze, turning appropriation into agency and silence into song.
Tender Revolutions will be released on September 12 by Beacon Sound and Antiquated Futures. Stream below and pre-order HERE.
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