Cruel Diagonals is the experimental project of Los Angeles-based vocalist, producer, and visual artist, Megan Mitchell. Merging haunting vocal work with dark electronics, Cruel Diagonals explores the tension between beauty and dissonance, structure and chaos. Her sound palette draws from contemporary influences such as musique concrète, noise, and dark ambient, as well as traditional music from across the globe. She navigates themes both visceral and cerebral, invoking the simultaneity of violence and stillness across geological time. Bandcamp Daily likens Mitchell’s work to the “power of a volcanic eruption, bubbling up from unimaginable depths into the atmosphere.”

 

Cruel Diagonals has released numerous musical works to critical acclaim since 2018, including her most recent EP, Calcite (2024) and full length record, Fractured Whole (2023). She has additionally collaborated with esteemed electronic music producers, Joshua Eustis (Telefon Tel Aviv, Nine Inch Nails) and Dimitris Papadatos (Jay Glass Dubs, Wild Terrier Orchestra). 

 

Though a producer in her own right, Dazed emphasizes Mitchell’s origins as a trained vocalist, “a singer’s singer….Blessed with a voice that could hold its own in the worlds of opera or classical.” As a singer, she has been featured on works such as The Weeknd’s “Red Terror” (from Hurry Up Tomorrow) and Mark Van Hoen’s (aka Locust) “Somewhere” (from The Eternal Present). 

 

As a live performer and video artist, Cruel Diagonals provides a glimpse into an otherworldly and uncanny terrain, marked by a juxtaposition of heavy, distorted sonic textures and a crystalline purity. She has toured the United States, Europe, and has played at MUTEK.SF, Desert Daze, and Corridor festivals.

 

Through a multidisciplinary practice that bridges sound, performance, and visual art, Cruel Diagonals conjures a sonic language both ancient and futurist, forging a unique dialect where the voice beckons, blooms, and rumbles from the tectonic depths.