2024 • 01 • 19
APOLLO BITRATE
despectral maid
WING 18
ALBUM — DIGITAL FILE — 51mins
Caybee Calabash (performing under the apollo bitrate project) is a Derby-based electronic artist dedicated to capturing high-saturation and adrenaline with each new release, a focus dripping from the sound to the visual aesthetics and back again. Her most recent release, “despectral maid”, is a collection of detonative post-chiptune-post-hardcore spheres of energy that, regardless of length, are anything but exhausting. Synthesized tones, chords and corruptions are welded onto unrelenting percussion and axe-wielded guitar jams. Even with all this intensity, DM’s genre-playfulness and optimistic, caffeinated qualities allow it the most core and simple descriptor of “fun”.
December 2021 – December 2023
2024 • 01 • 19
SHEFFNER
Tumult
WING 17
ALBUM — DIGITAL FILE — 48mins
Sheffner (Octa Möbius Sheffner, OMS) is a multigenre multimedium collage artist known for their fractaline span of sounds and projects, released in various degrees of connectivity or mystery. A codirector and creative influence in ANGEL’s ancestors, they are specialized in the creation of longform abstract suites of found sound.
With “Tumult”, Sheffner continues their studies of hypnotic plundering started with the release of last year’s two-hour REM-simulation and slushwave-tribute “FATAL”. Unlike this previous release, Tumult sheds any thick layerings of filters and weaves strings of (micro)samples as bare as possible, clicks and statics preserved, in a way that is still noticeably ambient. Chimes and field recordings are intertwined with unidentifiable loops of commercials, soundtrack and speech, appearing sporadically, yet naturally harmonized. The meditative length of the two pieces, combined with their wave-like tessellations of sounds and patterns, creates an experience like a dream in the purest sense of the word.
2023.11.23 – 2023.12.20
2024 • 01 • 11
EXIT ZERO
Instincts
WING 16
ALBUM — DIGITAL FILE — 57mins
DYNAMICS alum and curator of self-defined “gore-drone” audio, Exit Zero has excavated years of unreleased tracks and strange dreams to create “Instincts”. The release is uniquely sinister, mixing plundered loops with bouts of sound effects and drones picked up by the archive. Instincts began as a project titled “Primal” in 2018 before being rebuilt into its current identity.
2016-2018
2023 • 12 • 05
TRANSMISSION ARCHIVES
Shin Hatsubai
WING +2
ALBUM — DIGITAL FILE — 27mins
Simultaneously ambient and chaotic, “Shin Hatsubai” or “新発売” is a channel-surfing experiment in erratic layering and repetition. The release was performed through a series of microsamples done through video editing software, creating a uniquely tempoless and liquid sound.
新発売 is released in audio form through the ANGEL Bandcamp page, and in video form through the ANGEL MEDIA YouTube channel.
2023 • 12 • 01
End of ANGEL Ch.1
WING β
V/A ALBUM — DIGITAL FILE — 18mins
This release marks a new year of ANGEL operations.
End of ANGEL Ch.1 contains new 120-second transmissions made by our artists from over the past year. Where the previous chapter involved recapturing the sounds of the artists’ previous releases, Ch. 1 involves a greater amount of experimentation and deconstruction, ending with dotnds’s ambient-DnB double feature.
2023 • 11 • 20
SHIFALA
Hoyden
WING 15
ALBUM — DIGITAL FILE — 27mins
Shifala is a multi-genre, multi-persona artist specializing in longform noise and abstract-electronic sessions. Where their previous releases have focused on deep, almost intimidatingly-vast soundscapes, “Hoyden” shifts directions into thin slices of ambient, glitch and microsampling.
The album takes advantage of every second it is given, creating a variety of patterns and concepts that meld and disappear before the listener can fully analyze them. Any amount of stillness is just as easily taken away by hails of non-percussion or unreadable raw data. The release represents a physical and conscious transformation for the listener through a maze of sound.
November 2022 – August 2023
2023 • 08 • 18
CASINO
MOONSIDE
WING 14
ALBUM — DIGITAL FILE — 37mins
Following a nearly two-year-long period of refinement and experimentation, Clean Slate project CASINO has returned after its first album at the start of 2020. MOONSIDE is an extension and counterpart to his previous release “WISH I WERE HERE”, using the same volleys of compressed, fast-paced vaporwave-inspired-jungle connected to experimental interlude pieces, eccojams and FM synthesis.
The release uses a variety of new sounds and techniques, recutting the bitcrushed cloth of the project’s freshman album to fit poppy sequences and original compositions. Samples that may have been used in another light for nostalgia are instead mixed for adrenaline and entertainment. Good luck.
2022-2023
2023 • 08 • 01
BITRATE MEMORIES
BITRATE MEMORIES
WING 13
ALBUM — DIGITAL FILE — 32mins
BITRATE MEMORIES is a source of smooth rendered audio from an unknown location. Having released previously on ANGEL’s predecessors Net Century and DYNAMICS, it has returned to bring us a self-titled project of compressed vaporwave archives.
The album is home to a variety of ambient tracks for digital environments, an evolution from the project’s past releases that worked more in the late night lo-fi purview. Files fade in and out of reverb, stutter and shift. but remain enjoyable dreams streaming from a far-off server.
2023 • 07 • 07
PAINTSCRATCHER
hope
WING 12
ALBUM — DIGITAL FILE — 102mins
Returning to ANGEL following their PROGRAMS EP, Paintscratcher presents a collection of live works best described as remnants of jungle and IDM torn apart, stretched out and stitched together without any energy lost in the process. Each track experiments on what starts as loops and pads and turns into “zones” of sound, performances shifting between rhythm and noise.
2023 • 05 • 08
DEBUJO
nemesis intricate
WING 11
ALBUM — DIGITAL FILE — 53mins
debujo (a project by multigenre electronic artist spencer hodo) presents “nemesis intricate”, an album of neurofunk tracks combining sleekness and pure adrenaline. DnB projects Dillinja, ƆƐI3C and Johnny L are cited as inspirations for the project’s dynamic sound.
Rather than focusing on the 90s-retrofuturism seen in internet-breakbeat-revival, debujo hones his sound on raw energy and high fidelity in each track. The album features rough drum programming, jagged basslines, and atmospheric textures that combine to create a sense of tension and unease.
2023 • 04 • 20
SHIFALA
raw Turned them table I
A2 5
DJ MIX — DIGITAL FILE — 36mins
2023 • 04 • 14
DOTNDS
SUPERNOVÆ
WING 10
ALBUM — DIGITAL FILE + CD — 86mins
“sounds that have travelled the gap”
SUPERNOVÆ is the culmination of years of composing, listening and stargazing. Beginning as a series of mixtapes released across 2021 and 2022 simply titled “✰”, dotnds’s work is a seamless journey through artificially-recreated galaxies.
This is an album composed of five acts, each combining glitched audio transmissions and glittering ambient with powerful drum-and-bass “novas”. The consistent flow of the release is akin to the rotation of a planet, or a series of breaths in and out before the sweeping plunderphonic outro.
2023 • 02 • 15
MIDSTYLE
fuddy mix for no good
A2 4
DJ MIX — DIGITAL FILE — 15mins
2020-2022
Artwork by MIDSTYLE and Clean Slate
2023 • 02 • 03
Clean Slate
Path
A2 3
DJ MIX — DIGITAL FILE — 34mins
“This is a mix I first began constructing in 2019 that never got much past some mp3s put in a random folder. It was inspired by some kind of venue that’s no longer active as of this writing. I looked through journals, chatlogs and finally got an old laptop running again just to find the text file that had the tracklist in it. I’m putting this here as a time capsule and as testament to finding something that almost completely slipped through the cracks of time.”
Drafted Summer 2019, restored December 2022
2023 • 01 • 28
5thwrld
ETERNAL8 SOUND GALLERY
WING +1
EP — DIGITAL FILE — 15mins
Soundtrack composed for 5thwrld’s short film “ETERNAL8” released via ANGEL MEDIA
2023 • 01 • 07
Paintscratcher
PROGRAMS
WING 9
EP — DIGITAL FILE — 32mins
Paintscratcher, known best for their series of live works and black-hole-dense self-titled album, presents a two-sided EP with a similar reflex. Both “programs” are live improvisations, one more pensive and the other more aggressive, both giving off the feeling of staying up to see the sun rise.
Cover art by Clean Slate
2022 • 12 • 31
Agate Flow
The love you feel in times of need
WING 8
Album — DIGITAL FILE — 26mins
Agate Flow is a trusted name in ANGEL-familiar projects (last working together on Net Century-published “Once you’ve loved somebody” in 2018). We are entrusted here with a series of live plunderphonic sessions, a unique sort of rusted-coil ambient with a sentimentality that tries to escape its own waveforms. Slow loops lose themselves to their own filters, creating cascades of feedback and tones like stones thrown into water.
Mastering by Clean Slate
2022 • 12 • 08
5thwrld
MIRAGE COLLECTION
WING 7
Album — DIGITAL FILE — 25mins
“a collection of fragments, loose ends and missing pieces”
5thwrld is a project that could be best described as using bitrate as an instrument as much as any percussion or synth. In a way that is less nostalgic and more timelessly crystalline, their tracks hold hard-hitting jungle, drum-and-bass, dance and ambient stylings in fragile glass shells.
2022 • 12 • 01
End of ANGEL Ch.0
WING α
V/A EP — DIGITAL FILE — 14mins
This release marks the 0th year of ANGEL operations.
The album contains new materials from each previous ANGEL-published artist, in the style of their previous works. Tracks are kept at or under a 120-second time limit (save for vaio temple’s sweeping ambient outro) to make the release easily consumed and explored.
2022 • 06 • 17
SLIMEGRRRL RITUALZ FEAT. ALOE VERA LYNN
DON’T FLY AWAY (HUMMINGBIRD)
A2 2
DJ MIX — DIGITAL FILE — 44mins
tape/vinyl rips
performed may 2022
2022 • 05 • 13
☆滴☆ // D R O P L E T
MISS//COMFORT
WING 6
Album — DIGITAL FILE — 18mins
DROPLET (Shifala, Synod, dj webcam*:･ﾟ) presents a release easily placeable anywhere in the musical timeline of the last decade of beat-making. Wavy, reverb-splashed, and dreamily optimistic, the project bobs through both vintage trill pastels and modern electronic arcanity.
2022 • 04 • 13
vaio temple
終わりの前からの残党
WING 5
Album — DIGITAL FILE — 40mins
vaio temple’s “終わりの前からの残党” creates an icy, white-tinted maze of abandoned electronics expos and commercial sets. This is an album of sweeping ambient that can shift from isolating to crowding in minutes. Tracks flow seamlessly, but each encases their own unique sounds, giving an added exploratory element to the release. The dream lasts only for a moment; you can take nothing with you, but the memory remains.
2022 • 03 • 31
Eir Mazur
DATASEED
WING 4
Album — DIGITAL FILE — 57mins
Eir Mazur (of .tif, national tv, aloe vera lynn, and myriad sibling projects) introduces “DATASEED”, an hour-length ambient suite presented in two acts. Both sides to the album are built with a warmth between digital and natural, creating a meditative and encompassing world inside.
Composed March 2022
2021 • 12 • 31
MIDSTYLE
MIDSTYLE2021
WING 3
EP — DIGITAL FILE — 14mins
MIDSTYLE (known best as VHS MIDNIGHT STYLE) closes the year with “MIDSTYLE2021”, an EP of slushed, vocoded and strewn-about vaporwave jams. Best suited for the half-awake generative algorithms of music services decades to come.
2021 • 12 • 25
Clean Slate
Resting Places
A2 1
DJ MIX — DIGITAL FILE — 59mins
A lost relaxation tape found buried in the outskirts of Mount Etna.
Restored July 2021
2021 • 12 • 17
dotnds
Codename.Atlantis+
WING 2
EP — DIGITAL FILE — 17mins
Atlantis awaits a pure soul.
“Codename.Atlantis+” is a collection of bright, hard-hitting tracks by dotnds, rereleased with a new cover and retuned audio by ANGEL staff. The EP is a jaunt through shimmering, VGM-inspired drum-and-bass, a quick uplifting journey to elusive lands.
Mastered by Clean Slate.
Cover art by Clean Slate, art direction by dotnds.
2021 • 12 • 01
Clean Slate
434C45414E
WING 1
Album — DIGITAL FILE — 28mins
Finished shortly before the release of plunderphonic mixtape “paradise tension” in May and then kept in secrecy, 434C45414E is a lost chapter in ANGEL founder Clean Slate’s discography now exposed to the light.
The album was formed over the course of two weeks as a palette-cleanser, moving from minimalist loops to crushed breaks and drum machines strewn between crystallized vocals and live phone-recorded ambient sessions. It is an almost impatient yet fine-tuned sound that bridges a gap between the artist’s 2019 downtempo “WORLD CIRCUIT” and 2020 experimental wildcard “truself”.
