‘i Thought I’d Finish The Album Then Die’: How Angelo De Augustine Came Back From A Medical Nightmare

On Halloween 2022, Angelo De Augustine was astatine location successful Los Angeles erstwhile he abruptly collapsed. “I sewage each these unusual sensations and knew thing was very wrong,” says nan 33-year aged singer-songwriter. “Then I mislaid power of my body.” Luckily, he had family astir who were capable to unreserved him to hospital, wherever he was put done days of exhausting tests. “I was conscious astir of nan clip unfortunately,” he says drily, “but I don’t retrieve a full batch astir it different than I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t spot good and I couldn’t really move.” Despite countless explorations, doctors were incapable to connection a actual diagnosis, and yet sent him home. “They said, ‘Come backmost if you spell wholly deaf aliases blind.’”

Reeling and semi-incapacitated, De Augustine had conscionable 1 thought: to decorativeness Toil and Trouble, nan medium he had been making for nan preceding year. “Nobody was helping and I didn’t deliberation I would past nan illness,” he admits. “I couldn’t do basal tasks for illustration assistance things, but I’d worked truthful difficult I didn’t want to time off it incomplete. As acold arsenic I was concerned, I wanted to get it vanished and past thought I was astir apt gonna die.”

The medium was to beryllium nan latest summation to a catalogue generating much and much interest. After his 2014 debut Spirals of Silence, De Augustine signed to Sufjan Stevens’ explanation Asthmatic Kitty for 2017’s Swim Inside nan Moon; nan brace past made an acclaimed medium together, 2021’s A Beginner’s Mind. In 2023, De Augustine’s opus Time, from his 2019 medium Tomb, which besides features Stevens, was utilized successful Zach Braff’s movie A Good Person. Time became De Augustine’s astir celebrated song, pinch much than 31m streams, but he was acold excessively sick to capitalise connected its success. As he admits: “I’ve had to wholly alteration my life.”

Toil and Trouble was yet released successful 2023. “I astir apt pushed done measurement excessively overmuch to make that album,” he says. “I couldn’t assistance things.” In nan 3 years since, De Augustine has undergone betterment and had to relearn to walk, talk, hear, play and sing. Those experiences person informed a caller album, Angel successful Plainclothes, filled pinch beautifully otherworldly reflections connected life’s transience.

Several songs callback nan wistful beauty of Nick Drake aliases early Paul Simon. The beautiful Spirit of nan Unknown reflects connected nan elemental joys De Augustine feared he mightiness suffer for ever: “All my life’s a distant representation / Apples connected nan character / The sun complete nan oversea / Another melody.” Lead azygous Mirror Mirror finds him looking astatine his reflection but not seeing himself, which he explains is simply a metaphor for really he was emotion for overmuch of nan time. “Like a ghost,” he says softly complete a telephone from his studio, which he calls A Secret Place. “You spot everyone surviving their lives and it’s for illustration you don’t exist.”

Lately, he says, emerging investigation points towards what was incorrect pinch him. “Obviously I’m nary doctor, but there’s much subject coming retired astir nan domiciled nan cardinal tense strategy plays successful each our functions,” he says. “Sometimes erstwhile personification is nether a awesome woody of chronic fearfulness and accent for a very agelong clip they tin spell past nan allostatic load: nan tense system’s expertise to self-regulate. The encephalon tries to protect itself, truthful it sends each these unusual symptoms to your body. I felt for illustration my full assemblage was shutting down.” As to what mightiness person caused his chronic fearfulness and stress, he suggests: “The euphony manufacture tin beryllium very stressful, conscionable trying to exist. But I ne'er felt I was not trim retired for this. It’s each I cognize really to do.”

De Augustine’s parents were musical, though his drummer begetter near erstwhile he was five, leaving his mother Wendy Fraser – a master vocalist who sang connected nan Dirty Dancing soundtrack’s She’s Like nan Wind – to bring him up connected her own. Initially, De Augustine was each group to go a master shot subordinate earlier injuries ended his playing days. Then euphony took hold. “It gave maine a measurement to definitive myself, which astir group don’t have,” he says. “I didn’t get lessons aliases study different people’s songs. I conscionable started penning my own, which possibly makes them different.”

During his betterment he returned location to unrecorded pinch his mother “because I couldn’t moreover make meal for myself”, he says. Since then, advancement has been: “Stop. Start. Get a small better, get a small worse.” One early breakthrough was joining a section spa. “I realised that erstwhile I was successful water, nan symptoms went away,” he says, “which was nan commencement of realising conscionable really stressed I’d been.”

Also important was signing up to a regular programme of beingness and intelligence exercises, prompting a “slow but upward trend. It taught maine to retrain nan parts of my encephalon wherever wires had go crossed. For a agelong time, playing guitar and singing felt incorrect and weird, but past very slowly, it came back.” Once that happened he recovered he was capable to constitute songs. The first, Empty Shell, opens nan caller medium pinch nan question: “Where do you tally erstwhile your life’s connected nan line?

Whenever he felt good enough, De Augustine would commencement recording. Where he had mostly made those erstwhile albums connected his ain – playing and engineering everything – he wasn’t fresh enough, truthful brought successful extracurricular help: Kevin Morby strings arranger Oliver Hill, harpist Leng Bian, Tomb shaper Thomas Bartlett (AKA Doveman) connected soft and his mother, who is credited arsenic a percussionist.

LA musician/producer Jonathan Wilson provided drums and his mountainous workplace successful Topanga Canyon for The Cure – a opus which De Augustine explains draws parallels betwixt unwellness and addiction, “an extracurricular unit that tin person a existent clasp connected you” – and has since go a friend. “I was going location a batch during my rehabilitation,” says De Augustine. “I was trying to find places successful quality that I could spell to that weren’t acold away.”

The album’s ethereal beauty has besides been shaped by usage of ancient instrumentation: a bowed psaltery and aquarion, arsenic good arsenic a Marxophone (a fretless zither patented successful 2012), a bass recorder, a train whistle, a 1960s German guitaret, a miniature accordion and moreover a 1990s synthesiser type of a Japanese koto harp. Looking for caller sounds is thing of a hobby. “I conscionable recovered a civilian war-era pump organ successful a section store,” he says, pinch palpable enthusiasm. “You tin transportation it successful a suitcase.”

Slowly but surely, he’s rebuilding his career. Last year, he played unrecorded for nan first clip successful 5 years to spot if he could negociate it. “There were immoderate difficult moments,” he admits now, “but getting done that conscionable felt amazing. You wanna return these small steps. You don’t wanna spell from zero to 100.” Still not afloat healed, he presently feels for illustration a transverse betwixt “something for illustration my aged self” and a different person, who nary longer takes thing successful life for granted.

“I’m conscionable really trying to find myself again,” he says. “For truthful long, my only attraction was trying to beryllium a awesome songwriter and possibly I paid nan value for that. Now I’d alternatively not person tried truthful hard. I conscionable want to unrecorded a bully life.” When I propose that Angel successful Plainclothes is packed pinch awesome songs, he mildly concedes, “Maybe erstwhile we’re not truthful fixated connected an outcome, it tin travel to pass.”