Languorous pianos, droning strings, and a complete absence of traditional percussion create a sense of circling around a fixed point rather than driving towards an end destination. Chua sings at a volume barely above a whisper; as though she’s by your side, confessing her innermost thoughts directly into your ear. It’s a disarmingly intimate record, but one that invites you in with openness and generosity.
Working primarily with the cello, Chua describes music as a ‘mother tongue;’ using her expressive style to give a voice to the messiness of human emotion. With YIAN, she entered the studio with no agenda other than to allow the music to illuminate parts of herself that couldn’t easily be put into words.
The ten songs that emerged from that process are a compassionate exploration of selfhood that rewards patience and resists easy answers. The album’s title forms part of the name given to her by her parents – Siew Yian – to preserve her connection to her Chinese heritage. But the name ‘Yian’ also refers to migratory swallows in Chinese – a metaphor that was not lost on Chua as she interrogated her experience inhabiting the spaces between the Chinese, Malaysian and English cultures of her family.
YIAN is both comforting and, at times, uncomfortable. “Meditations on A Place” features a warm swirl of strings that stretch out in all directions like the first light of a sunrise. It’s not hard to imagine the swallow gliding towards the horizon line, high above the concerns of those on the ground. However, the swallow appears in a restless form on “Autumn Leaves Don’t Come,” where Chua laments in a hushed lower register “I’ve been living in the sky too long / waiting for someone to take me home.”
At her most compelling, Chua taps into lyrical images that build these instrumentals into vast, edgeless worlds. The ocean in “An Ocean” is both an empty expanse that separates her from home and the gentle tidal force that carries her back towards it. On “Echo,” she creates the illusion of space with a chorus of voices that echo her own as she wrestles with generational trauma. “I won’t carry your shame / Won’t be your echo again,” she murmurs over a sparse arrangement; the creaking of her piano’s pedals just audible in the mix.
YIAN’s most moving moment comes on “Golden.” The accompanying video – created with a team of predominantly East and Southeast Asian talent – sees Chua facing her younger self as she reflects on the alienation she felt as a child. But as they dance together, that pain melts away, and the drab grey set illuminates with a warming glow: “when the sunlight hits me / I’m golden, you’ll see.” It’s a powerful, tender depiction of self-acceptance and one that might offer comfort to anyone who lives at the intersections of different cultures and identities.
