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Aug 27, 2015 Deradoorian By Billy Hamilton

When a record is pushed as a ‘cosmic ideal’ by its PR team, you expect something different. And when that record has been produced by Angel Deradoorian, famed for her work as vocalist and bassline creator for New York progressives Dirty Projectors, there’s a pretty good chance it will be. The Expanding Flower Planet doesn’t disappoint.

The L.A. songstress’s debut solo effort is very much an otherworldly assembly of music through the ages—past, present and quite possibly future. Mooted as an exploratory search into the mind and its capabilities, the record is as expansive as it promises; taking influence from across countless musical zephyrs and crystallizing it as a future thinking, yet oddly familiar, mélange of songs.

Opener “A Beautiful Woman” is a strong barometer for the record’s direction. Awash with cascading percussion, it’s a galloping freak folk throng imbued with a driving motorik groove that’s as uncontainable as a tUnE-yArDs wigout. This experimental edge, sifts its way through numbers such as “Ouneya” and “The Invisible Man,” evoking a kind of free spirited, free thinking ambience that feels like the product of an Animal Collective and Can smoke session.

In places, the experimentation can feel more uncoordinated than unpredictable. The jazz bar meandering of “DarkLord” is wearing and aimless, while “Your Creator” plods at its own pace to a static rhythm speckled with ZX Spectrum-like effects. It’s in more focused moments where Deradoorian delivers. Particularly sublime is “The Eye,” an extraordinary melodic flow of dark bass and synthesizer purified by crystalline harmonies.

Such immersive panoramas are the ultimate reward of a record that tries to take listeners to places they’ve never been. It doesn’t always work, but that’s the beauty of The Expanding Flower Planet—its songs are unconventional, enveloping and mesmerising. ‘Cosmic ideal’ is not far off the mark. (www.soundcloud.com/deradoorian)

Author rating: 7/10