For Angel Deradoorian, pop is not a straight road on which you race straight to your destination with tunnel vision. It takes too many detours, turns and unplanned descents – the unusual in the catchy. Otherwise everything would be so much more boring, wouldn’t it? She’s had enough driving lessons, let’s just stay in the picture for a moment: for example in her collaboration with Russian synth-wave maverick Kate NV or during her time with the experimental band Dirty Projectors. She has always found the potential of pop where others wouldn’t look.
Her new solo album Ready For Heaven draws on the sounds of the Minus Straight in this mission: undercooled, minimalist cold wave, with lots of smoke billowing and the occasional wind instrument emerging from the fog. The more distance the songs create with their coldness, the closer you want to get to them. Tracks like “Any Other World” are frugal, unfolding slowly, not needing much more than a little melody – but filling in all the blanks with the attitude of a singer and songwriter who makes everything out of very little. It is as if individual tracks of the songs have simply been removed to test whether they still work. They do.
