Draft:Angel di Amanté

Adrian Alexander Yi-Hernandez (born December 3, 1994), known by his stage name Angel di Amanté is an American singer-songwriter. Angel’s sound production, albeit amateur, is nostalgic in a grainy, vinyl-recording, low-fi type of way. His voice is dynamic and ranges from gritty vocal fry and jazz crooning to light, airy, ethereal falsettos mixed at times with campy, overtly auto-tuned belting and flares of cinematic, "siren-esque" whimpering, which is both hauntingly hypnotic and genre-defying, falling into niche categories of subgenres such as shoegaze, post-punk, alt, grunge, emo rap, dark synth, and indie pop. Angel believes that artists should not be limited to a certain range of expression, but should have the freedom to create and innovate as their heart desires. "'I think of myself as more of a storyteller than a singer. I don’t have the most amazing voice, but it fits the narrative I’m portraying through the medium of music. Art has a lot to do with identity. We see the world how we are; not how it is and I feel like as an artist you get to play the role of visionary and essentially create a world for people to escape into; something painted so rich, so nuanced, it comes to life and so life begins to imitate art itself. That’s transcendence. That is the end goal of our hierarchy of needs after all.”"

After many years of playing around with his sound in GarageBand, Angel soon learned to produce using Logic Pro. He began uploading his demos onto SoundCloud in 2017. In October 2022, 5 years later, Angel released his first EP titled "MELANCHOLIA", which includes 6 tracks. The EP itself has a melancholic feel with most songs set to a slow tempo with the use of heavy reverb on the vocals. Some of the themes in his music include metaphysical examinations e.g. free will vs. fate (which he dwells on frequently throughout his entire discography). Angel's experiences with substance abuse and mental health are also overarching themes in his music i.e. in the songs "War In My Mind" and "Get Free From Me" (feat. on innerlude), he talks about his struggles with bipolar disorder and subsequent drug use as a method for self-medicating.

Early life and education
Angel di Amanté was born Adrian Yi-Hernandez on December 3, 1994 in Miami, Florida. When he was around 5 years old, his parents divorced and was raised primarily by his mother, Nancy. From kindergarten up to middle school, Adrian switched schools several times. It was hard for him to make friends and felt much like an outcast very early on. Most of his friends were female. Adrian was not into sports or any stereotypical "boy" things. He was a very creative child and was more interested in artistic pursuits. He took piano lessons for many years and was selected by a magnet school for music. Aside from piano, Adrian also played violin for a short time. As his mother recollects, he was very imaginative and preferred playing pretend rather than with toys. Adrian and his sister, Alyssa, who is 16 months younger than him, loved dressing up and role playing. From a young age, Adrian loved musical theater. One of the first shows he ever saw was Evita, which he fell in love with and would listen to the cast recordings nonstop in the car and at home. He eventually auditioned at a local children's theater and was cast in the ensemble for Rodger and Hammerstein's Cinderella. In high school, Adrian studied TV production and broadcast journalism. After graduating, he went on to pursue a degree in Mass Communications and Journalism from Miami Dade College, where his mother works as an English professor. He graduated magna cum laude in 2015, and was recognized as the "Outstanding Student in Journalism" at the academic award ceremony as well as the Dean's List.

Post-2015 and music career
During his last semester of college, Adrian had his first serious mental health episode where he experienced psychosis due to mania. He was hospitalized and diagnosed with schizoaffective-type Bipolar I disorder. It took a few years for him to fully stabilize with the assistance of psychotropic medication, but even today is not except from occasional episodes, however, he is now aware and complaint with his condition. After that tumultuous time period, Adrian decided to turn his struggle into a story and a message for others who might be suffering in silence with their mental health too. He has become an advocate for mental health awareness and suicide prevention, which he has experienced firsthand.

Before venturing into music, Adrian mostly used creative writing as an outlet. He has collections of poetry, short stories, and even a very rough draft of a musical he hopes to one day produce. Some sources of inspiration include the 1995 movie, Total Eclipse, where Leonardo DiCaprio plays the role of french poet, Arthur Rimbaud. Some other writers whom Adrian admires are Tennessee Williams, Silvia Plath, Oscar Wilde, T.S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway. Adrian cites works such as George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and "The Stranger" by Albert Camus as influential; He also finds "Candide" by Voltaire, "Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Beckett, and "No Exit" by Jean-Paul Sartre to be noteworthy in shaping him as a writer.

2017: The birth of Angel di Amanté
Adrian says he came up with the stage name Angel di Amanté after the concept of angels and daimons which peeked his interest after reading about Greek mythology and philosophies such Nietzsche's eternal recurrence and the Latin phrase "amor fati", which means love of [one's] fate. It is said that daimons or daemons from the Proto-Indo-European daimon "provider, divider (of fortunes or destinies)," are tutelary deities who act as guiding spirits or messengers. "Diamante", spelled together, is also the word "diamond" in Spanish, but separated "di" is a preposition in Italian for "of" or "from" and "Amante" is translated from Spanish into English as "lover". So, Angel di Amanté actually contains multiple meanings that could be open to interpretation (intentionally). According to Adrian, the idea of subjectivity and objectivity in artwork create room for people to assess art in terms of their identity. In essence, people can only relate to a shared experience (empathy), which is not the same as sympathy, which is reluctantly imagining oneself in someone else's situation in order to understand how they might feel. Many of Angel's songs are purposefully vague or sometimes misleading in order for the listener to "fill in the blank" with his or her own subjective experience and relative meaning.

2022: The "soft launch"
Half a decade later, in late October of 2022, Angel puts out his first EP "MELANCHOLIA" on streaming music services i.e. Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, etc. Shortly after that, he also releases a project called "TRILOGY" which contains three singles on it: "Magnitude", "Amor Fati", and "27".

2023: Mischief, Madness & Mania
Angel's first official album dropped on April 13, 2023. The record included 7 tracks of which 2 ("Fucked Up Again" and "Sick&Tired") were previously released as singles, and one of them, "Crucify" was re-recorded and titled "(Don't) Crucify Me". The sound and production of this album was unlike anything Angel had previously done. Although he kept with the alternative rock feel, "Mischief, Madness & Mania" has its own character. Drawing from his youth, Angel wanted to replicate the music of the early MySpace "scene kid" era. For example, the song "Stay Up//Get High" features elements reminiscent of the iconic emo bands like My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The Disco.

The concept of this album can be classified as a bildungsroman or "a coming of age". On the first track, "Mass Hysteria", Angel recalls "feeling the rush in the moment" and the inability to control his base impulses almost like a child. The next song, "Stay Up // Get High", would be characteristic of the developmental stage when a child either learns moderation or over-indulges. Following that is "Mischief, Madness & Mania" glorying the "fun" but ultimately destructive behaviors that are typical with adolescents in the rebellious stages when the per-frontal cortex (the area of the brain dealing with decision-making) is still not fully development. Next there's "Fucked Up Again", dealing with the experimental phase of life and the trail and error of trying new things and discerning what is and what is not for us. Once we reach the point where we become "Sick & Tired" of making the same mistake, this is where we begin to change and try to learn from our past experiences so we don't keep repeating the same lesson. Although a bit elusive, the next song "(Don't) Crucify Me" has to do with total transformation and the idea of rebirth or resurrection like the story of Lazarus in the Bible or Christ after he was crucified. Essentially, the song is about starting over despite people being critical of you or having harsh judgments against you. It's about carrying your cross even when it's heavy and burdensome. Last but not least is "On The Otherside", which is the fateful step in the hero's journey where he crosses over to the other side of the threshold from "the ordinary world" to "the special world."