When the singer-songwriter and Sufjan Stevens collaborator became gravely ill, he had to learn to walk, talk, hear, play and sing again. Music – and a love of antique instrumentation – helped him rebuild
On Halloween 2021, Angelo De Augustine was at home in Los Angeles when he suddenly collapsed. “I got all these strange sensations and knew something was very wrong,” says the 33-year old singer-songwriter. “Then I lost control of my body.” Luckily, he had family around who were able to rush him to hospital, where he was put through days of exhausting tests. “I was conscious most of the time unfortunately,” he says drily, “but I don’t remember a whole lot about it other than I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t see well and I couldn’t really move.” Despite countless explorations, doctors were unable to offer a concrete diagnosis, and eventually sent him home. “They said, ‘Come back if you go completely deaf or blind.’”
Reeling and semi-incapacitated, De Augustine had just one thought: to finish Toil and Trouble, the album he had been making for the preceding year. “Nobody was helping and I didn’t think I would survive the illness,” he admits. “I couldn’t do basic tasks like lift things, but I’d worked so hard I didn’t want to leave it incomplete. As far as I was concerned, I wanted to get it finished and then thought I was probably gonna die.”
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