Expanding On Expanding Flower Planet

"There just came a point where I was either going to do another cycle with Dirty Projectors or I was going to explore my own music," says Angel Deradoorian, the 29-year-old who records under her surname. In 2012 she left Dirty Projectors, setting out to make her debut solo LP, 2015's The Expanding Flower Planet. It's a true solo album: despite the presence of Kenny Gilmore (long-time Ariel Pink producer), Jeremy Hyman (with whom she plays in Avey Tare's Slasher Flicks) and her sister Arlene, the record found Deradoorian writing, playing, recording, and producing it almost entirely herself, in isolation.

"It's made to unify, to make life better, to hear the beauty that exists on earth."

"It was important for me to do this first album by myself," says Deradoorian. "It was such a challenge to do it, I needed to show myself I could do it. I wanted it to be a very insular experience on many levels… I was totally starting from scratch. When I left Dirty Projectors I had no material. It was really 'write one thing and start recording', not really knowing what form it was going to take. It took a while to figure out, I wrote a lot of complete pieces of shit for a while. Then I wrote Expanding Flower Planet, the song. And that was really the first song where I was finally 'okay, this one doesn't suck to me'. So, I looked at the elements in it that I liked, and worked out how I could turn that into more."

Spending years working on The Expanding Flower Planet, Deradoorian drew on something she's harboured since her childhood: self-discipline. "I always took my schoolwork and my music-work very seriously. I think it's really important every child has some form of self-discipline, that there's something they're doing just for themselves, to prepare them for moving into the 'adult' — that's in quotations — world. It's a good practice to get into at a young age: to think about what you want to do, and do it; to assert yourself and rely on yourself."

Growing up in Northern California, Deradoorian was the youngest of three siblings. Her father was a jazz musician, her mother an artist; the house creative and chaotic. "We were a loud group of people," she recalls. "We were the loud family. Lots of noise, lots of music being played, watching movies, cooking, all making art. We were a very emotional group. There weren't many dull moments in the house. We really were like five artists living together, just all at very different ages, and times in our lives. Which was a funny combination to grow up in."

"We were the loud family. Lots of noise, lots of music being played, watching movies, cooking, all making art. We were a very emotional group."

Deradoorian moved to New York at 20 and joined Dirty Projectors just as the band was undergoing a transformation from Dave Longstreth's project to a more fully fledged band. Her first solo EP, 2009's Mind Raft, came out a month before the breakout DP LP Bitte Orca, whose success meant tending to both the band and her solo work became untenable. Deradoorian chose to go solo, her concept of self-discipline involving an understanding that "you need to keep moving forward, keep proving your validity". The chance to make a solo album was, she says, "not just a side-project, [but] an opportunity to present myself as who I am now."

"It's funny," Deradoorian says, "because I've been making music for such a long time, but to other people, I just have this one record." This one record is full of cascading vocals, layers of keyboards and percussion, polyrhythms and drones. Deradoorian took influence from '70s cosmic jazz and psychedelia, and its title — The Expanding Flower Planet — is a metaphor for the expansion of consciousness; the record her journey into self.

"Music is a very all-encompassing field; it's at once pretty selfish and really generous," Deradoorian says. "I need a lot of time alone. I need a lot of time to reflect, and work, and work on myself. I need time to create something to put out into the world. It's a newer process for me, to go this deep into it, because I've always worked in bands with other people; it's quite a shift knowing how much time you have to spend alone to produce something that is of quality. The generous part comes after that, after ripping through your soul, putting it on an album, and having the courage to show it to people, to share your vulnerability with the world. Music is a very bonding art form, the most unifying art form in the world. It speaks on many, many levels of consciousness. It's made to unify, to make life better, to hear the beauty that exists on earth."