Find the Sun

Angel Deradoorian’s Find the Sun was born from 10 days of silence: The former Dirty Projectors bassist and singer was deep into a Vipassana meditation retreat when she realized that she wanted to record her second full-length as spontaneously as possible. After the meticulous home-recorded layers of her debut LP, 2015’s The Expanding Flower Planet, she itched to get into the studio with improvising musicians, including percussionist (and sound healer) Samer Ghadry and DARKSIDE guitarist Dave Harrington. The result of their sessions together is a questing, live-sounding album that builds on the spiritual overtones of 2017’s Eternal Recurrence EP while swapping synths and reverbed vocals for spacious, intricate drumming and stripped-down guitar and bass parts. Pairing minimalism with psychedelia and the odd hint of stoner metal, it’s the kind of thing you might get from a krautrock band decamping to the California desert. “Corsican Shores,” like an ultra-lo-fi Stereolab, channels the dulcet sound of ’60s girl groups, while “Saturnine Night” drapes vocal drones over motorik grooves and “The Illuminator” toots primal flutes over an all-night drum circle. Deradoorian’s voice is as hypnotic as ever, coaxing wild spirits from a narrow band of tone. Even at its heaviest—the feral acid rock of the closing “Sun”—pockets of silence billow in between every chanted syllable and explosive guitar figure.