Will Schube is an American Pharaoh.
Angel Deradoorian’s acrobatic vocal performances have been sorely missed. Sure, she released a record with Avey Tare and the Slasher Flicks last year, but her voice often gave way to the more aggressive stylings of Tare. Angel was an integral member of Dirty Projectors, but her last stint with them ended after the Bitte Orca tour. That record introduced a lot of folks to her elastic melodic stylings, featured on tracks like “Remade Horizon” and “Cannibal Resource.” Her only solo release also came in 2009, a five track affair with Lovepump United. She’s just announced that record’s followup, an LP coming with Anticon later this year. First single “A Beautiful Woman” reintroduces Angel Deradoorian as an artist far more confident, daring, and exciting than the musician witnessed on that EP six years prior.
https://soundcloud.com/anticon/deradoorian-a-beautiful-woman-1/s-SrtLo
Deradoorian’s vocals on “A Beautiful Woman” have a sirenlike quality. Her voice pops up in layers, peaking out of crevices and corners, luring the listener in. Angel’s music embraces the spiritual interventions in the everyday, conjuring up something less religious than energetic. The drums, which manage to stand out even as Deradoorian’s voice bounces from end to end, pulse and clang in an spirited catharsis. This marriage between voicing and rhythm recalls the forward chug of Rebop Baah’s otherworldly percussive style in Can with Alice Coltrane’s untethered universality. While Deradoorian’s early solo output pitted these cosmic universalities against minimal musical backgrounds, “A Beautiful Woman” embraces complexity. The track’s various parts interlock in chaos, but Deradoorian’s voice, missing for too long, shines through the lovely mayhem with its striking versatility and beauty.
