The heart of the new EP isn’t a broken relationship, but the identity that crumbled in its wake.
For UK-based indie artist MavAngelo, the story of his EP ALTER EGO isn’t a typical breakup narrative.
It’s a quiet, unravelling confession where the heartbreak was never the point.
As a self-taught multi-instrumentalist and producer, and a critical care nurse by day, MavAngelo creates guitar-led dream pop from a place of profound honesty.
His soft, reverb-soaked vocals float over R&B-leaning beats and John Mayer-esque guitar lines, creating a sound that feels like a memory you can’t shake.
While the first five tracks trace the slow collapse of a relationship, the final track, ‘Lost’, reveals the true devastation: the loss of self.
In this exclusive interview, the reluctant singer turned reluctant frontman discusses the courage it takes to be imperfect, how the Philippines and the UK shaped his sound, and why the most honest track on his new EP doesn’t have a single word.
HAPPY: What’d you get up to today?
MAVANGELO: I’m making music post Alter Ego EP and preparing to fly home in 10 hours to surprise my youngest brother on his university graduation. He has been my scholar ever since.
HAPPY: Tell us a little about where you’re from, and what you love about it!
MAVANGELO: There are two places I’m from. The Philippines forged me in iron. It taught me to survive, to be independent, that if you don’t move you’re done. Persistence and practicality were all from home.
The UK taught me how to be free, to actually chase the passion, and that it’s okay to feel a little weird. One place taught me to survive, the other taught me to live. I think you can hear both fighting it out in the music.
HAPPY: You never wanted to be a singer. What finally pushed you in front of the mic?
MAVANGELO: I grew up in an environment where self-expression gets killed instantly. Singing was something I only did alone in my room and rarely, even when karaoke basically became our national sport.
When I started making music, the expression came through the instruments first. The guitar, bass, piano, and drums were safety nets. But at some point I wanted the art in its full form, and you can’t get there hiding behind an instrument.
What pushed me in front of the mic is the same thing that pushed me to break out of my insecurity and embrace being imperfect. I’ve got the whole arsenal to make it clinically perfect.
The point isn’t that I can’t fix the cracks, it’s that I choose not to. Perfect would be a lie.
HAPPY: Your earlier work was all instrumental prog and metal. How did you end up in dream pop?
MAVANGELO: This is one of the hardest questions I face as an artist. I cannot shrink it to one sentence. When I started playing, my fuel was to impress.
I wanted people to think I was a tough musician, someone who could rip through 7/8 time signatures, speed-run a fretboard, throw solos that’d make people squint and go ‘oooo-kay.’ But behind the earphones?
It was mostly Sinatra, the Bee Gees, George Benson. Those were the artists of songs I’d sing in my head walking down the street, imagining I was in some cinematic music video.
The honest answer is that I’m a hybrid — mixed with everything. Asian, brown, an immigrant who left to chase something home couldn’t offer yet.
I’m licensed to save the lives of critical patients — and after enough of it, you go numb, not because you stop caring but because the emotion of watching people die over and over is too much to keep carrying raw.
So I’m numb on the outside, but way too emotional and reflective underneath. I’m the nonchalant gym rat everyone assumes is loading up hype rap or metal, but I’m hitting my last rep to Glimpse of Us, Mayer’s Gravity or Matt Corby’s Resolution.
I don’t even fully understand it. But it’s the same blood in me that chooses to be friends with every genre.
HAPPY: You play, produce and record everything yourself in a bedroom setup. What does your creative process look like from start to finish?
MAVANGELO: Honestly, I’m not an audio engineer. I don’t have a formal background in music production at all. I save lives for a living, and I only ever had the budget for a basic Focusrite Scarlett and the instruments I saved up years for as a hobby that turned into a passion.
When I started, I genuinely thought you just pressed record, stacked the takes, and exported the file. Very wrong. After years of trial and error, criticism, reviews, and still learning, my process now starts from emotion.
That’s the foundation.
So I ask myself: what do I feel today? Today’s gloomy. Today I watched a breakup happen. Last night I watched someone take their last breath. I take that emotion and hum it into a melody.
From there I build the beat, the bassline, the guitar rhythm, then the synths to top it off, those are non-negotiable for me. I spend an enormous amount of time on the guitar lines and the vocal melody.
The vocals are the hardest part, honestly. They take me take after take after take.
I’d love to break the whole thing down, but it would run way too long for one answer. If you’ve got the budget, a professional producer is genuinely worth it, I won’t pretend otherwise.
But if you’re an independent musician who wants to DIY and take control of every element yourself, and you want to know how someone with zero engineering background actually makes it work, reach out. I’d love to connect.
And if Happy Mag’s up for it, I’d happily do a separate feature on it. My only real tool was obsession. That obsession is what made me dig through every free resource I could find and connect the dots myself.
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HAPPY: Who are your biggest influences right now and how do they show up in your sound?
MAVANGELO: Vocally, it’s Joji and Wave to Earth. That’s where the softness and the melancholy come from. The guitars are mostly John Mayer; that phrasing is burned into me. The synths are funny, though.
They’re shaped by these random nostalgic reels that show up on my feed, those uncredited loops that hit you right in the chest. Whoever those composers are, thank you. And the bass and the beats?
That’s the part I’m still figuring out myself from constant experimenting. I have no map, but I know alt R&B is where my beat lives. I want the rhythm to feel like it’s slouching, not marching.
That laid-back drag is where the sound becomes mine.
HAPPY: Which track on ALTER EGO best represents where you are right now as an artist?
MAVANGELO: Blurred. It is the instrumental on the EP, track 4. No words, no vocals, just guitar carrying the whole weight by itself. It sits right in the middle of the record, in the part where the words run out.
The rest of Alter Ego is me trying to explain the feeling. Blurred is the feeling before I’ve explained anything. And that’s exactly why it represents where I’m at.
I said earlier that the microphone made my art feel full, and it did. But Blurred messes with that whole idea, because the most honest thing on the record has no lyrics at all, and I can’t fully explain why. Words pin a feeling down.
They narrow it, they tell you exactly what to feel. The second you put them in a sentence they shrink. Blurred lives in the part that won’t translate. It’s abstract on purpose. You can’t fact-check a feeling, you just feel it.
So where I’m at right now is realising the most honest thing I can make doesn’t always need words. Blurred is the proof. It’s the one track I can’t put into words, which is probably the truest thing I’ve made.
HAPPY: What do you want listeners to take away from ALTER EGO?
MAVANGELO: Alter Ego looks like a breakup EP on the surface, five tracks of watching someone slip away then the last one is saying that the breakup was never the point.
It’s about the mask. We build a harder version of ourselves to survive. I’m tough, I’m fine, nothing touches me, and we wear it so long we forget the real one’s still under there.
You armor up so nothing can hurt you, then one day you can’t soften for the people who actually matter either, and it’s not just heartbreak.
Maybe you’re reading this on your office break, grinding for the promotion, racing the deadline, doomscrolling at home for a dopamine hit, and somewhere in there you forgot painting was the thing that actually made you feel alive.
Or maybe you’re the strong one for everyone else: the friend everybody leans on, the one who always has it together, and you’ve worn that role so long you can’t remember the last time you let someone hold you.
The first five songs sound like I’m losing someone. The last one admits it: I was losing Me. That’s the takeaway. Not only my story but yours, in the mirror.
HAPPY: What’s next for you after ALTER EGO? More vocals or maybe a return to instrumentals?
MAVANGELO: My sound keeps evolving, so I’m not boxing myself in. The plan is to be single every month and keep releasing, keep learning, no long silences.
After ALTER EGO, the one thing I know for sure is I want to push genre fusion harder, and pull both sides of me into it: the vocals and the instrumentals living in the same song instead of separate projects.
I’m also looking to collaborate with more indie artists. That’s where the interesting stuff happens and I want to start doing live open mics. I’ve built everything behind a screen so far; it’s time to feel it in a room.
HAPPY: Lastly, what makes you happy? :-)
MAVANGELO: Out of the 10 questions, this is the hardest. Happiness for me isn’t the big stuff. It’s not the release day or the numbers or somebody calling me an artist.
It’s the small ugly moments nobody claps for. 3:33 am with my headphones on finally landing the one take that doesn’t lie. That riff that finally sits right after fighting it for a week. That little click when a song stops being a draft and starts being true.
And weirdly, my night shifts make me happy in a way that’s hard to explain. You sit with people on their hardest days, sometimes their last, and it strips everything down to what actually matters.
Nobody on their last night is talking about the promotion or the follower count. That perspective is a gift. It makes me go home and pick up the guitar like it’s the only thing that’s real, because for that moment it is.
So I guess what makes me happy is feeling alive on purpose. Doing the thing I’d do even if nobody was watching. And honestly I think that’s the same for everyone. You already know what yours is.
The guitar, the pen, the camera, the kitchen, whatever it is that taps you on the shoulder and say I will make you feel alive again. I think that happiness is just answering it back.
