Music Existence Because of Music, We Exist
Cinematic performance artist Angel has begun the new year on a high note. Holding solid backgrounds in film directing and score composing, the emerging Scots-Irish Australian singer-songwriter is unveiling “Hero,” her newest culminative project.
As Angel states in the video’s preface, the project is “dedicated in the memory of those who have given their lives in sacrifice, so that we may learn to live, grow, and love once again.” Its inspiration is channeled through the 2017 Manchester terrorist attacks, as well as the shooting of Christina Grimme. However, the thematic perspective of the video is sensibly kept broad.
There’s much in the way of nuance for how the tone of this project is presented. The first—and most outright—example comes from the song. Angel’s vocal tonality is fluttery, yet forthright, as if from a heavenly spirit reaching out to the fallen. Her persona thus fits ideally into the piano’s chord sequence (done in collaboration with Jamie Messenger) which emits a haunting, and strangely, equally healing, reverberation. On the other hand, the latter example, that of the video’s direction, is more subtly implemented. Angel stands amid a bleakly white backdrop, which transitions to an eerily vivid, almost out of place fond memory—much like how one’s dreams are constructed. Angel is then seen in an off-color wedding ceremony, to ‘die’ and be eternalized in a ghostly mirror world. Further on, the shift between a bomb in its final seconds until detonation, and the subsequent cracking of the mirror, symbolizes the extent to which death affects all, regardless of scenario.
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