Fire-Toolz

Producer / composer / multi-instrumentalist Angel Marcloid records music under the moniker Fire-Toolz. Though Marcloid’s output emerges in many distinct aliases — from the jazz fusion / new age of Nonlocal Forecast to the vapor dreams of MindSpring Memories — the Fire-Toolz catalog remains the central focus of the prolific artist’s musical universe. Fire-Toolz has released five full-lengths on Chicago label Hausu Mountain, including 2021’s Eternal Home and 2023’s I am upset because I see something that is not there, along with an LP on Ohio label Orange Milk, and a wide array of self-released music. The project draws energy from the constant fluctuation between seemingly disparate styles, yet Marcloid pulls off the impossible feat again and again of making chaotic deviations and improbable jump-cuts between ideas sound natural. Bursts of harsh textural noise cut into drifts of new age synth bliss, while miniature screamo verses bookend passages of hyper-technical prog rock. Breakbeats collide with death metal-inspired drum programming into cybernetic spikes of intensity. At times, Marcloid offers us some form of pop music, carried in passages of clean vocals and bright synth tones. Though Fire-Toolz weaves together far-flung elements of Marcloid’s musical upbringing, the project never engages in outright nostalgia. These vocabularies are not relics of the past dusted off and presented as novelties. They’re living traditions that the artist works with in the present tense.