Cruel Diagonals

Megan Mitchell composes unsettling, ethereal music under the alias, Cruel Diagonals. A jazz and classically trained vocalist, Mitchell performs and creates in numerous capacities. Some of her current endeavors include acting as proprietor of the left-of-field music index for women/trans/non-binary composers, Many Many Women, and researching, visiting and documenting places of abandoned industry around the Pacific Northwest and California with her field recorder and camera in tow. A selection of Mitchell’s field recording endeavors was a feature in The Stranger’s“Person of Interest” column. She is additionally an accredited archivist with a Master in Library and Information Sciences from the University of Washington, specializing in audio archiving. She is currently processing the audio archives of music producer, Randall Dunn. 
 
Cruel Diagonals is an outlet for destructive sample processing, vocal exploration, and a palette for inter-media contemplations and applications. Selected performance credits to date include sets at Corridor Festival and Debacle Festival, as well as a live set opener for Pharmakon, High Plains (Kranky), and Pod Blotz. Additionally, her DJ sets include performances with Holly Herndon, Shifted, and Elysia Crampton. Influenced by early experimental filmmakers such as Luis Buñuel and Maya Deren, cinematic terms will describe Cruel Diagonals as evoking moods and montages of an eerie, surrealist timbre. Warped field recordings and layered vocals incite a beckoning to a phantasmagorical, metallic-tinged state of existence. 

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