A Time to Die

For their third LP, Angel-Ho delivers a project that’s equal parts sonic cultural subversion and performance art. The multidisciplinary creative challenges genre and sexuality norms through compelling audiovisual projects and boundary-pushing pop that’s most at home on the dance floor, and with *A Time to Die*, they explore everything from queer love (“Tonight”) to self-affirmation (“Express Your Way”) and the world-changing power of community (“Broken Hearts”).

Angel-Ho the Musician and Creative Director have created a third album titled ‘A Time To Die’. The album is an entendre for the depression of covid-19 not being able to perform and living in survival as an artist while the other meaning to the artist is making the moment a celebration as a time to gag at their abstract take on Club & Pop music. Having created Death Becomes Her in 2019, a more political statement using their vocals as a means in her quest to dislodge gender binaries and power hierarchies, Angel-Ho challenges this even further to make disruption in the perceptions of doubt on their artistry. Angel-Ho puts in what they enjoy most listening to bird sounds and is inspired by their pitch change as an influence by nature, in hopes of making peace in her music and mind. She has pushed herself into unfamiliar territory distorting the genres to find resolution in music production. Having taken a year to collaborate with producers she found herself trading her authenticity and feeling somewhat far removed from the body of the music, to simply lay vocals over a beat was not enough for her direction. She jumped back into the studio and realized that the message is clearest when it is directly from the horse’s mouth. A Time To Die pushes Angel-Ho into the forefront of their productions and has produced 8 of the 11 experimental smashers. Tonight produced by Henry Howe is a rap romance about forbidden love. Moving onto About My Boo, Angel writes a poem about how we reflect on each other in order to love ourselves as much as we love our partners in an experimental lush band of electronic manipulations. We dive into Popt My Heart a song that has developed after 3 years says Angel, Popt My Heart is a linear literal statement that the love has gone sour and she is in seek of solitude, independence, and a restart. She challenges her fears by creating a surreal construct of personas with a drag sensibility and moral conscious deliveries representing the creation of new discourses for transgendered people of valour, fierceness, and strength. Moving into Dancing On Air, a slimy lethargic breakup into finding their lightness and release, recognizing her strength as a trans-femme and discipline of self-love. Warrior is leaving the mess of needing and lust and leaps into the essence of simply being powerful and in control of their struggles. Express Your Way breaks the disco narrative flips it and creates a message of boundless passion for self-expression. Headshot is the fantasy of taking a photo and searching for the perfect pose, learning, loving the moment, a magician teaching you how to pose. Their take on pop is a misbehaving misdemeanor attitude with their technique rooted in a classical grotto-like fantasy. Angel-Ho dives into the fantasy of reality of being a non-conforming queer African body with the capacity to critique the history we create as a society. “This is my escape from a harsh reality, and it is my peace I wish to share with the world”, says Angel-Ho. Suffering from a lifelong mental illness she feels in control and sets the tone that severe mental health is not a room for stigma and shame, rather a place for embracing the challenge and rising to the occasion with optimism. Liberation presents peace and a message of unity and liberating the bodies of trans people from dysphoria. Got Me Going is reconnecting with inner sexuality in a discordant body party. A tortured mind is merely considered a channel for Angel-Ho’s creativity and she is a fighter when it comes to her weaknesses, as a way for her to overcome the mind and reality. Broken Hearts shows that community is what will change the world and make living a better place. She is one of the free thinkers of our generation casting her voice into history as an African non-conforming trans person having dreams that can become a reality, setting an example for those to come as well as for those who are present to always embrace the unknown and conquering their mental saboteur.