Marcy Angeles has been translating PTSD into sound since 2015. The Nednhi Apache and Guamares Two Spirit musician, journalist, painter, and author from southern New Mexico started her first music project Tvod (named after the song from The Normal) specifically because painting wasn’t saying enough anymore.
“I realized that painting was not doing enough for my mental health and that I had more to say creatively,” she explains. “It felt essential for people to feel PTSD through sound and to create more empathy for the communities I come from.”
That impulse runs through everything she does. On February 20th, her new album “Data Mining” arrives via Berlin/Lisbon-based exude records. Ten tracks of glitchy electronic breaks, polyrhythmic drum and bass, melodic guitar, and what the label calls haunting incantations. We’re premiering “Music Entry” today — a post-punk thing built on a heavy distorted bassline that goes after the gatekeeping trans artists face in music scenes. More on that in a moment.
First, some context. Angeles grew up too poor for internet access. Her exposure to the outside world came through reading, video games, 120 Minutes and the amp on MTV. Older siblings and cousins put The Cure, New Order, and Depeche Mode in rotation when she was five. Her mother was an artist working in soft pastels on textured watercolor paper, and young Marcy would sit beside her with crayons. That was the beginning.
She found rave culture as a teenager, dropped out of high school — “for my own safety,” she says — and went deep. Weekend raves, weeklies multiple times a week, partying every day. She became the first trans DJ in El Paso, which was accidental: “I was a bedroom DJ who played a party for a friend as a favor and that was followed by multiple gigs in the area.” The backlash came anyway.
Wyświetl ten post na Instagramie
Angeles lives with Complex PTSD, Bipolar Disorder, and Agoraphobia. She’s currently 18 and a half years sober and speaks openly about it. “Traumatized people make excellent addicts,” she says. “I do not regret the fun I had but thoroughly enjoy living a sober life as substance/alcohol abuse only exasperates mental health struggles.” The Bipolar Disorder, she notes, is honestly the least of her concerns thanks to medication. Learning to cope with trauma is the bigger fight. “The upside is that the trauma fuels my creativity — the repetition of an hourglass that always fills herself back up.”
In Apache culture, Two Spirit people — those carrying two oscillating energies driving the same body — are considered a blessing. “This phenomenon makes us excellent medicine people and healers and because of that, we were held sacred in many tribes since time immemorial,” Angeles explains. The term Two Spirit itself is a blanket term coined in the 1990s. Apaches recognize five genders.
That sacred standing didn’t protect her from the world outside. She was always visibly trans and easily singled out. The details of her trauma she keeps in her book “The Queers Of The Underground,” published in 2024 — originally an article that some media outlets refused to run even after it reached the editorial process. “No one was about to suppress the voice of me or the communities I come from and so I turned that essay into a book.” The book covers queer and trans contributions to building the foundation of rave culture, including BIPOC contributions from the Indigenous trans perspective. There was a pattern she kept seeing: “rave scenes pushing trans out, even though we had been there since its inception.”
Over the years, Angeles has moved through projects — Llaace, Western Obsidian, The Hand, Naki, +Vod (Tvod), Careflower — and worked across electro-acoustic, noise rock, industrial, post-punk, house, indie rock, shoegaze, trip hop, ambient, soundscape, and more. “I don’t like being confined to a genre and don’t like people setting limitations for me or the communities I come from.” She was the fourth artist signed to Voluminous Arts, the label founded by Gavilán Rayna Russom. Now she’s on exude records, a label run by and releasing music exclusively from trans* artists, co-founded by mx.pinky and enby faerie — originally a series of Berlin community raves that grew into something bigger.
Last year, exude’s first compilation “Eternal” included her track “Two Spirit Existence Is Indigenous Resistance.” The label has collaborated with over 50 international artists, hosted events in Berlin and Lisbon, raised over €20,000 in mutual aid, and been featured on KEXP, Refuge Worldwide, and Cashmere Radio.
Now comes “Data Mining.” The concept is the search for information — how we conduct ourselves in social interaction, finding wounds to transmute into art, discovering people’s motives, locating peace in other beings. “People with PTSD yearn for control but as spiritual people, sometimes we need to know when to surrender because Creator always knows what we need best,” she says. In a society where personal information is rarely kept sacred, the album looks both inward and outward.
“Birdsong” opens the record as a communication with birds during the early morning hours — connection to animals matters because, in her people’s belief, we are not removed from nature.
The title track “Data Mining” works with a reflective atmosphere and glitchy breaks, going inward to find blank space for meditation against a busy mind.
“Pineal Gland” gets into alternative means of sourcing knowledge through the spiritual realm.
“The Angel & The Parasite,” built on strumming guitar, tells the story of being a survivor who advocates for yourself and your community — wondering if all the hard work will actually leave space for everyone to find some happiness.
And then there’s “Music Entry,” which we’re premiering here. It’s about the gatekeeping of music scenes that reject your work simply because you’re a gender variant person. “When you are Trans and a creative, it is treated as any art form we partake in becoming cliché,” Angeles says. The song puts that frustration over a distorted bassline and lets it breathe for eight minutes.
Her work outside music keeps the same temperature. In 2021, she became the first Two Spirit person to have their own exhibit at the Branigan Cultural Museum in Las Cruces, New Mexico. She was part of the first ever Indigenous Trans Panel hosted by Dine Equality of Navajo Nation in 2020. In 2021, she spoke at the Holloquium Nightlife Conference about nightlife in relationship to sacred land. In 2023, she received the Disruptor’s Award from The Center Of Cultural Power. Her writing has appeared in Two Spirits Are Sacred Zine, War Resisters League, Parallax Magazine, Barrio Panther, and others. She moved into self-publishing to discuss queer, trans, and disability issues without editorial interference.
Her most recent book, “Immutable Amative Ballads,” is a sci-fi love story where a character devotes herself to the ghost of her fallen lover. She considered leaving out that the character is trans but decided the detail mattered. “Most men are not eager to openly date a trans person and so when you find someone that isn’t embarrassed to love you, you feel it will never happen again.” The book is about the lessons of love, heartbreak, and the hope that comes with both. “Heartbreak and falling in love are the two most relatable things. You will never meet a person that hasn’t loved someone.”
Wyświetl ten post na Instagramie
Angeles describes her approach as journalistic even in music — she discusses disability, MMIWG2S, being outcasted, love, healing, heartbreak. On “Angel On The Red Light District” from her album “Soundtracks For Desert Movies,” she addresses the troubles of dating as a trans woman. “People are not always prepared for our truth and typically experience a stage of shock when I discuss these issues. I am not going to offer you vague, that’s just not a part of my recipe.”
“Data Mining” is the third release on exude records. Vocals, lyrics, music production, and photography by Angeles. Mastering by mx.pinky. Artwork by Angeles and enby faerie.
“We are all souls that are co-creating with The Divine,” she says. “I hope that my art and the art of my communities can highlight our humanity and the humanity of everyone else. We must be tender and careful with each other because life is a blessing, even if it’s the life of someone else.”
Stream “Music Entry” below.
