On Halloween 2022, Angelo De Augustine experienced a sudden and terrifying collapse at his home in Los Angeles. The 33-year-vintage singer-songwriter describes a moment of immediate, intuitive dread: “I got all these strange sensations and knew something was very wrong,” he recalls. “Then I lost control of my body.”
What followed was a period of profound medical uncertainty. Rushed to the hospital by family, De Augustine spent days undergoing an exhaustive battery of tests. While he remained conscious for much of the ordeal, he describes a harrowing sensory deprivation, noting that he could not hear, could not notice clearly, and was unable to move. Despite the clinical investigations, doctors were unable to provide a concrete diagnosis. He was eventually sent home with a chillingly open-ended instruction: “Come back if you go completely deaf or blind.”
This medical nightmare occurred just as De Augustine was reaching a professional peak. His song “Time,” from the 2019 album Tomb, had found a wider audience after being featured in Zach Braff’s film A Good Person, amassing more than 31 million streams. Yet, as the world began to take notice, De Augustine was fighting for his basic survival. He found himself in a paradoxical state: reeling and semi-incapacitated, yet driven by a singular, desperate obsession to finish Toil and Trouble, the album he had been recording for a year.
“Nobody was helping and I didn’t think I would survive the illness,” De Augustine admits. In a state of perceived finality, he pushed through physical limitations that made basic tasks, such as lifting objects, impossible. “As far as I was concerned, I wanted to get it finished and then thought I was probably gonna die.”
The Cost of Creative Obsession
The release of Toil and Trouble in 2023 marked the end of a grueling chapter, but the toll on De Augustine’s health was severe. In the years following his collapse, he faced the grueling task of relearning the fundamental mechanics of human existence: how to walk, talk, hear, and eventually, how to sing and play his instruments again.
Reflecting on the period, De Augustine suggests that his singular devotion to his craft may have contributed to his physical breakdown. “My only focus was on trying to be a great songwriter – and perhaps I paid the price for that,” he says. This realization has grow the emotional bedrock of his latest work, Angel in Plainclothes, an album that serves as a sonic meditation on transience and the fragility of the self.
The music is characterized by an ethereal, wistful quality reminiscent of Nick Drake or the early recordings of Paul Simon. On the lead single “Mirror Mirror,” De Augustine uses his own reflection as a metaphor for the dissociation he felt during his illness. “Like a ghost,” he explains from his studio, which he calls A Secret Place. “You see everyone living their lives and it’s like you don’t exist.”
Decoding the Nervous System
While a formal clinical diagnosis remained elusive, De Augustine has found clarity through emerging research into the central nervous system. He points to the concept of “allostatic load”—the limit to which the body can self-regulate under chronic stress. When a person is subjected to prolonged fear or pressure, the brain may attempt to protect itself by triggering a systemic shutdown, manifesting as the strange, debilitating symptoms he experienced.
He attributes this chronic stress in part to the pressures of the music industry, though he maintains a deep, innate connection to his work. “The music industry can be very stressful, just trying to exist,” he says. “But I never felt I was not cut out for this. It’s all I know how to do.”
His path to recovery was not linear, but rather a series of oscillations. After returning to live with his mother, Wendy Fraser—a professional vocalist known for her work on the Dirty Dancing soundtrack—he experienced a cycle of “stop, start, get a little better, get a little worse.” A pivotal breakthrough occurred at a local spa, where he discovered that the symptoms vanished while he was in the water, a revelation that highlighted the depth of his psychological stress.
Recovery eventually required a structured regimen of physical and mental exercises to “retrain” the brain and repair the “crossed wires” that had made singing and playing guitar feel alien. The first song born from this recovery, “Empty Shell,” asks the central question of his ordeal: “Where do you run when your life’s on the line?”
A New Sonic Palette and a Different Perspective
Because he was not physically fit enough to engineer and play every instrument as he had on previous records, De Augustine opened his process to collaborators for Angel in Plainclothes. The album features contributions from producer Thomas Bartlett (Doveman) on piano, harpist Leng Bian, and strings arranger Oliver Hill. His mother also contributed as a percussionist.
The recording process extended to the Topanga Canyon studio of producer Jonathan Wilson, who provided drums and a sanctuary in nature. This environment helped shape the song “The Cure,” which De Augustine describes as a parallel between illness and addiction—both being “an outside force that can have a real hold on you.”
The album is further distinguished by an array of antique and rare instrumentation, reflecting De Augustine’s hobby of collecting unusual sounds. The sonic landscape includes:
- A Marxophone (a fretless zither)
- A bowed psaltery and aquarion
- A 1960s German guitaret
- A bass recorder and a train whistle
- A civil war-era pump organ found in a local store
This willingness to experiment with the periphery of sound mirrors his new approach to life. After five years away from the stage, he returned to live performance last year to test his limits. While he admits there were “hard moments,” the experience of overcoming them was transformative. He describes himself now as a hybrid: a mix of his former self and a new person who no longer takes existence for granted.
“I’m just really trying to find myself again,” he says. “Now I’d rather not have tried so hard. I just want to live a good life.”
Disclaimer: This article discusses medical experiences and the concept of allostatic load for informational purposes; it does not constitute medical advice. Please consult a healthcare professional for medical concerns.
Angel in Plainclothes is released via Asthmatic Kitty on April 24.
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