B el o w & rig ht : A n g el dera do o ria n a t echo pa rk l a ke, Lo s a n g el es, CA .
Stillness Isn’t The Move Deradoorian’s spirituality caused her to walk away from Dirty Projectors and rediscover who she is Photogra phy: nathaniel woo d / writer: reef younis
“I’m sorry, my sister’s making fun of me,” Angel Deradoorian laughs down the phone. The pair are somewhere in Texas, en route to Albuquerque as part of Deradoorian’s second US tour of the year. After that, they’ll head across the Atlantic for a few shows in Europe, but for now the siblings are giggling over drive-thru coffee orders and the incessant chatter of a stubborn Sat nav. “Right now, I’m kind of just floating around because I’ve been
touring so much I don’t really live anywhere. I was in Baltimore, before that I was in New York, and I’ve been living in LA for the past few years. I’ve been moving around quite a bit.” Working from the road is something Angel has become increasingly accustomed to over recent months. After taking a break from Dirty Projectors, releasing her debut album ‘Expanding Flower Planet’, and stepping up to the fresh challenge of going solo, the transition from city
slicker to transient troubadour seems to be working well for the Californian. “It’s liberating now,” she says, “but in the process of doing it, it took a while to feel what it was going to be. A lot of this process has been reaching for something that I wasn’t totally sure of how I was going to get it. I’ve been reaching for an idea or a future self that I knew I would eventually get to but didn’t know how long it would take or how it would play out.” Predominantly known for her
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work in the Dave Longstreth-led Dirty Projectors, Deradoorian stepped back from the band in 2012 to focus on creating her own music. A change of city soon followed, and she moved to Baltimore with boyfriend Dave Portner (aka Animal Collective’s Avey Tare) to collaborate on Avey Tare’s Slasher Flicks and take the first steps towards making ‘Expanding Flower Planet’ a reality. “With Dirty Projectors, there wasn’t a lot of back and forth,” she explains. “David would write the