Angie Caldstral

**Angie Caldstral** (April 5, 1896- December 24, 1974) was an American mystic and musician. Beginning in 1921, Angie recorded countless sound experiments which influenced a great variety of musicians.

## Biography

### Early Life

Angie Caldstral was born in West Haven, Connecticut in 1896 to Arnold and Nina Caldstral, both of whom were artists. Due to her parents' desire to be closely involved in the art movements of the time, the Caldstral family moved to Paris in 1905. By 1909, the Caldstral family were familiar faces at many art happenings, and became friends with the likes of Pablo Picasso, Vaslav Nijinsky, Igor Stravinsky, and Gertrude Stein. However, Nina was far more talented than Arnold which led to her company being more enjoyed than Arnold's. Arnold became extremely jealous and, in 1911, murdered Nina.

### Paris

Somehow, Angie escaped the orphanages and began traveling with a group of gypsies. In 1919, Angie returned to Paris and reconnected with the old associates of her parents. In 1920, she met Hammond Thompson, a studio technician for the Victor Talking Machine Company. The two quickly became close friends, and she would often spend long nights at his makeshift studio in his apartment on the outskirts of Paris. It was not long before she found herself toying with his equipment and, by 1921, had begun making simple recordings of herself playing the piano. Due to Thompson pulling some strings, her piano recordings became distributed and sold modestly.

In early 1922, Angie and Joan Miro began an affair, which inspired the jealousy of Thompson. At a party on October 19th of that year, he attacked Angie with a knife, leaving her with a permanent scar on her left cheek. Immensely upset, she immediately left Paris and moved to Prague. It was in Prague that she became involved with an unknown secret society and began learning magic and a new form of alchemy that the society had created. The secrets of this alchemy remain unknown to the general public, but it is known, due largely in part to her, that this new alchemy had utilized modern science and had made great progress. However, Angie steadfastly refused to ever share these secrets with anyone, and would become vastly angered when pressured to reveal the secrets.

### Return to West Haven and Start of Musical Experimentation

In 1931, Angie returned to her birthplace for the first time since her parents had moved. She bought a small home just outside the city limits and began building a series of odd and slightly disturbing sculptures throughout her property. In 1933, she began making frequent trips to New York City, where she would buy sound recording equipment and instruments. At the same time, she began crafting her own instruments, which were often bizarre and created unearthly sounds.

During this time, she began recording the first in a series of strange music utilizing new instruments such as the electric guitar, the Theremin, the Martenot, and the Trautonium. Her music mixed these instruments with her own inventions and traditional instruments creating a unique style that drew great influence from various regional folk musics. She also became one of the first musicians to utilize recording equipment as an instrument on its own.

In 1936, she began sending tape recordings and self-pressed vinyl records to various old friends and modern artists. Joan Miro was the first to receive one of these recordings, and more copies soon found themselves being delivered to Maurice Ravel, Andre Breton, and Pablo Picasso, among others. Many of these recordings were passed along amongst the Surrealists, who found them a source of great inspiration.

### Disappearance and Return

Her distribution of these recordings came to a sudden halt in 1939, when she suddenly vanished. A police investigation turned up few clues and by early 1940, she was presumed dead and her house was cleared out. Eager to discover unknown recordings, Antonin Artaud, Andre Breton, and Jacques Baron. Together they managed to gather enough money from the artist community to purchase much of Angie's possessions, and upon returning to Paris, set up a small museum out of an apartment dedicated to her.

However, in 1943, Angie made an unexpected visit to the museum dedicated to her, apparently only to demand the return of her possessions. Stunned, the Surrealists compiled and offered to pay for her to live in the apartment they had made her museum. She accepted and immediately returned to her musical experiments, this time creating a series of recordings that seemed to make frequent references to some unknown school of occult knowledge. By 1946, her recordings had become so disturbing that few could bear to listen all the way through any.

Due to the rise in interest in experimental music such as Musique Concrete, some of Angie's earlier recordings began to see wide release as the 50s continued. However, her music continued to follow a path into the wildly disturbing. She began to become reclusive, rarely seeing anyone save for Joan Miro. However, by 1959 she refused to see even him. Her music began to somehow include incoherent choruses chanting in a wild manner as well as throat singers and horrid animal noises. As she never left her Parisian apartment anymore, this greatly disturbed all who managed to hear any of her recordings. In 1961, Capitol records attempted to distribute one of her more recent recordings, only for it to sell 27 copies.

In 1964, Angie revealed that she had been working on a book as well, which she had titled *The Plague of the Sounds of the Nevers.* This book was over 1500 pages long and had seemingly no plot, thus deterring any publishing company from attempting to publish it. This only inspired her to add on to it, and by her death in 1974 it was 431,624 pages long and filled with illustrations, charts, and article clippings.

### Later Years and Death

As the 1960s wore on, Angie's health began to deteriorate, possibly due to her increasing number of works ranging from incoherent essays, journals written in unbreakable ciphers, extremely complex musical compositions, increasingly unhinged recording experiments, strange dolls, apocalyptic drawings, and disturbing paintings. By 1970 she became bedridden but refused to cease working.

During this period, there was growing interest in her current musical experiments and, in 1968, United Artists released an album of her composition *Hel//DeaTh--/SPIrITS#SOULS#SDeamon* which sold terrifically despite the fact that the use of high pitched tones, buzzes, and infrasound among other sounds caused many to become extremely anxious to the point of nausea and vomiting. 1969 saw United Artists attempt to distribute another of her compositions, this one titled *Kill-Joy-SATANMOON* which sold poorly and was considered unlistenable in the extreme.

Due to the poor sales of *Kill-Joy-SATANMOON*, United Artists ceased any attempts to release new recordings by Angie, which did not appear to bother Angie in the least. In fact by 1969 she had become obsessed with completing *The Plague of the Sounds of the Nevers,* which she almost exclusively devoted her time to. On Christmas Eve, 1974, Angie died of undetermined causes. She was found clutching her book and a strange statuette depicting a creature no one has ever seen.