By tethering gauzy reverb and delicate vocals together with her intimate lyrics, American slowcore/shoegaze artist Angel Diaz aka Vyva Melinkolya sculpts emotive soundscapes that explore the awe and sublime terror of the human condition. Her second solo album, Unbecoming (2022), and her collaborative EP Orbweaving – which she co-wrote with multi-instrumentalist and audio engineer Madeline Johnston aka Midwife – both pacify the pain of the past, traversing shadowy territory in both a physical and emotional sense.
This weekend (17th-20th April), Vyva Melinkolya will be performing two sets at Roadburn Festival in Tilburg. Her shows are set to be a highlight of the weekend and we urge you to see her if you are lucky enough to have a ticket for the festival!
We think one of the best ways to get to know an artist is by asking what music inspired them to write in the first place. We caught up with Angel to ask about her “Five Favourites” – and she picked five albums by an eclectic range of artists who have inspired her songwriting techniques. Check out her choices below…
1. Grouper – AIA:Dreamloss
There is no single musician as important or influential to me as Grouper. I’ve spent nearly a decade of my life listening to her everyday, especially before sleep. Dreamloss found me in late 2018 during the start an extremely dark period in my life. Earlier in the year, when things were less dire, I was obsessing over the other “half” of the double album – AIA: Alien Observer. Alien Observer, in every sense of the word, is dreamy. It has an effervescent quality to it, it can feel like a collection of “tape-saturated” lullabies. As my life began to change however, and I became more and more honest with myself about the things happening to me and around me, Dreamloss was somewhat of a reality check.
When Brian Eno described the genesis of ambient music, he talked of wanting to create sounds that didn’t impose themselves in a space, that could exist as a backdrop. My experience with Dreamloss, especially those first few lessons, couldn’t have been more different. The album opener ‘Dragging the Streets’ starts with the line “can you hear the sounds they make at night” which, still terrifies me. Speaking of lyrics, the words to ‘Soul Eraser’ are almost all intelligible. I have this fantasy of sorts that if I’m somehow able to figure out what she’s singing, I will disappear. Orbweaving (especially the title track) would not exist without this album.
2. Low – Curtain Hits The Cast
If Grouper is the most important solo musician to me, Low is the most important band . First of all, the title is extremely ominous, even kind of “Doomy”. I consider the first four tracks of this album to be one of the strongest side-As in alternative music. ‘The Plan’ is maybe my favorite “Mimi” song, her voice is at its warmest and has a sort of “wisdom” to it, even if the lyrics are mostly questions. Her voice always feels “motherly” to me. This album has just as many “loving” moments as it does “dark”. Two songs later, ‘Mom Says’ (one of my favorite “Alan” songs) is eerie in a way that’s hard to describe. It ends with the line “mom says, we ruined her body”, jeez.
Side B is incredible as well, with ‘Do You Know How To Waltz’ feeling like both an ascent and a descent into the cosmos or the ocean. The album ends with a song called ‘Dark’ which is essentially a children’s song about “how to not be afraid of the dark” – that one makes me tear up the most I think. I was listening to this album a lot in summer 2020, I have a very specific memory of putting it on during a drive to Bloomington, Indiana. Now I can’t do any sort of drive over 3 hours without it. Especially when it’s warm out. Low sounds best in the midwest and pairs best with the sounds of crickets and trucks going by.
3. Nicole Dollanganger – Natural Born Losers
Another album I fell in love with in summer 2020. I had listened before, but that’s when it fully “hit” me. I was spending a lot of time outside, especially at the skate park until the very early hours of the morning. It couldn’t have sound-tracked that time better. If you haven’t heard this album yet and want to (you should) wait till late May or June (it’s to be enjoyed every season though). This album is sensual, it’s yearning, it’s violent, it sinks its claws into you from start to finish. The final chorus of ‘Mean’ makes me feel like I’m being dragged across pavement, while ‘You’re So Cool’ feels absolute soaring and it’s one of the most “devotional” love songs ever.
I’ve truly learned so much from this record – and from Nicole’s music in general – about song writing. Especially how to set a scene and keep that scene in people’s minds. Production wise, the album has my favorite examples of “ebow” (device that vibrates the guitar string using a magnets) use. A lot of times when people record with it (myself included) it sounds harsh and awkward, but it just floats over this album like a cirrus cloud. Track for track, never have “pop” caliber vocals and post-rock instrumentals had a more beautiful marriage.
4. Giles Corey – Giles Corey
I think the term “concept album” is used inappropriately at times, so I shy away from using it. But if you held a gun to my head and asked me my favorite concept album, I would say Giles Corey. First of all, one of my favorite things about the record is the companion book, which I have annotated and dog-eared excessively. I would love to do something like that with a Vyva Melinkolya album one day. I’m a fan of big sounds, and as a musician I sort of default to maximalism. Giles Corey is an absolutely massive album with absolutely titanic sounds. ‘The Haunting Presence’ and ‘Buried Above Ground’ are perfect examples of this, heavily layered but with all sounds 100% essential. The album is also a thorough depiction of depression that feels universal without ever feeling “cliched”. There will definitely be some Giles Corey worship on the next Vyva Melinkokya album.
5. Lisa Germano – In the Maybe World
Though as a listener I have a preference for bigger sounds, Lisa Germano does an incredible job of making superficially “smaller” songs hit like a ton of bricks. If Natural Born Losers is a perfect summer album, In the Maybe World is the perfect winter album, and not just because the cover art is a winter scene. I got into this album in late 2022. I had spent a couple years before that enjoying her earlier albums like Geek The Girl and Slide which are more lively and gritty in comparison to her later work. In the Maybe World is sort of mutable in the respect that, if you’re listening for the textures it reads like an ambient album (I fall asleep to it sometimes), while if you’re giving it your full attention, it’s a body of work that’s deeply confessional and heart wrenching.
Lisa Germano has an honesty to her song writing that’s a lot to reckon with at times, but validating as well. When she says “go to hell, fuck you” on ‘Red Thread’ (a beautiful, almost medieval sounding guitar ballad) I feel so vindicated every time. It’s a perfect album for breakups and troubles of the heart and when I found it back in 2022, it was relatable to a painful degree. To me, it’s also an album about isolation and a fear of the world outside — which I currently relate to, painfully. As a musician, both as a lyricist and a multi-instrumentalist (violin, piano, guitar, accordion, mandolin, other things I’m sure) I look up to her a lot and I feel like she deserves a lot more credit and exposure for decades of amazing albums.
Thanks to Angel for sharing her favourites with us!
Listen to her album Unbecoming here
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Photo Credit: Hayden Anhedonia
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