Trained as a classical pianist, on her new album Road to Spring the composer DaYe pays tribute to her hometown of Yangzhou, which is situated on the north bank of the Yangtze and is known as the ancient birthplace of the Grand Canal which was built to connect northern and southern China, as well as for its traditions of poetry, lacquerware and jade, its gardens and alleyways, bath houses and pavilions and the picturesque Slender West Lake with its weeping willows, bridges and temple.
Several of these features or sights provide the song names on Road to Spring, as DaYe captures their enduring beauty or fleeting memories drawn from her childhood as on the piece ‘In Fenzhuang Alley, Wearing a Green Neckerchief’ through an often limpid patter of bell chimes and bird calls, rattles and reeds, brusque keys and mallet percussions. Yet for DaYe these compositions of place are bittersweet, memories only as she has now herself moved to the north and seeks to meld the brisk traces or wistful pangs of the past with her endeavour to adjust to life and forge a new identity amidst more contemporary surroundings.
So there are also plenty of synthetic sounds and crackling or staticky electronics over the ample yet still somehow pent-up and chastened course of Road to Spring, plus slumping drums and ringing chimes which inhabit or even pierce the inner ear in the manner of auditory distortion products like on the second composition ‘The Wanderer of Renfengli’, both punctuating and puncturing the pleasantries and otherwise placid airs of the glimmering ‘Laolang Temple in Suchang Street’, which contains just a hint of melancholy burbling queasily underneath, or ‘Along Xiaodongmen Bridge’ which despite the urban setting stands as a fine pastoral.
Road to Spring is more avant-garde than twee, with an anticipatory breeze and traces of DaYe’s classical learning even as it touches upon ambient benchmarks and the Japanese environmental genre of kankyo ongaku or turn-of-the-century standouts by the likes of Thomas Knak and Múm with their glitching beats and humble or waifish melodies. Perhaps it’s the talk of lakes and canals, the sometimes aqueous sound palette or those chugging and jazzy rhythms, for Road to Spring also reminds me of Stephan Crump’s thoroughly engrossing Slow Water from last year which starred Patricia Brennan on vibes alongside Crump’s own acoustic bass and the strings of Joanna Mattrey and yuniya edi kwon, with Jacob Garchik on the trombone and Kenny Warren on the trumpet.
