Los Angeles-based art pop artist Angel Deradoorian has shared the video for her new song “Monk’s Robes” from the upcoming album Find The Sun.
“Monk’s Robes” follows a monk who journeys to a mountain top in hopes of being one with God. When he arrives, his God turns his worldview on its head, exposing his ignorance as he questions his understanding of the world and his desires to be free. All the more prescient in today’s circumstances, it is a song about accepting the futility of attempting to escape your reality, finding peace in acceptance and working with what you have to make something beautiful.
“I’ve heard so many people say ‘I want to escape to the mountain and live alone because life is so fucking painful sometimes,’” Deradoorian says. “And that’s not really the way to do it either. You need to be isolated, you need to learn about yourself, but you can’t really stay there. You also need to integrate. You need to do both.”
Due to complications from COVID-19, Deradoorian has postponed the release of Find The Sun. Originally scheduled for May 22, the album will now be released digitally and on vinyl on September 18, 2020. All upcoming tour dates are also indefinitely postponed.
Inspired by the freedom of Can and the singing style of Damo Suzuki as well as the influence of Indian spirituality on free jazz masters like Pharoah Sanders and Sun Ra, Deradoorian gravitates to transportive, shamanic sounds on this record, wielding bells, flutes, and gongs in service of a rock record guided by the spirits.
“Overall, a lot of these songs are about trying to reach yourself – how to be your most
brilliant self,” Deradoorian says. “…because we come from a culture that doesn’t actually support this. We are so deeply programmed to obey societal boundaries that we don’t even know the power we contain within.”
Find the Sun is an expression of the non-linear nature of time, the idea that there is no current version of one’s Self. The capture of that moment is why the record is so raw: Whatever is in front of you is what you’re working with now, and that’s OK. Even as a listener, being in the moment physically with the music brings you back to that place where mind and body coalesce. In that sense, it’s ripe for projection of oneself onto the sounds and words, to reflect one’s physical Self with something as ethereal as the sound waves in music. “Find the Sun is a record to sit and listen to, and ask yourself about your Self,” Deradoorian says.