Tender / Wading finds Matthew Sage, aka M. Sage,in the foothills and pastures of Colorado, writing,recording, and returning to a patch of his homelandand identity, one act of sympathetic care informingthe next. Constructed primarily on piano and clarinet,and then embellished with guitar, modular synthesizer,percussion, and field recordings captured aroundthe perimeter of his home, the album is a sweeping,serene vision of vitality, radical softness, and thereassuring sense of coming home, even if home haschanged.Since the early 2010s, Sage has assembledan idiosyncratic catalog of music that sprawls invarious sound directions, manifesting with releaseson Geographic North, Orange Milk, and MoonGlyph, and garnering both critical attention and aloyal listenership present for each new turn. In 2023,Sage debuted on RVNG Intl. With Paradise Crick,which coincided with his ongoing output within theimprovisatory ambient jazz quartet, Fuubutsushi, andhe now delivers his next solo endeavor and direction.Tender / Wading follows Sage's return to Coloradoafter nearly a decade in Chicago, now nurturing acouple acres of neglected space with his young familythirty miles outside his hometown. In a holistic contrastto Crick's synthetic sound-world, Sage renders artfrom the act of stewarding new growth, questioningconstructs of domestic life, and understanding thefootsteps of his former self through the dirt-smeared,sweat-fogged lens of the present. The yield is his mostautobiographical material to date, marked by time andchanges in perception and