Bleep

Full bio written by Fanny Chiarello, author of Basta Now: Women, Trans & Non-binary in Experimental Music

It all started early. Angel Marcloid was 3 when she was gifted a cheap acoustic guitar and, from there, took over every instrument she could get her hands on. As a teenager, she played drums, bass, electric guitar and sang in several DIY bands, exploring different musical genres – why stick to one when so many are just as exciting?

Ever since, Angel has been piling up many selves: Nonlocal Forecast, Angelwings Marmalade, Yapping Portal, Mindspring Memories, World of White Ice, Path To Lobster Believers and many others, all living in the same body. Each of these avatars play with the codes and instruments of a hyperspecific musical genre, and each of them is like a little room in the house you are about to enter: welcome to Fire-Toolz house – or may I say Fire-Toolz temple of maximalism, which is actually a spaceship. Around the Fire-Toolz house floats a cloud of colorful tags that you can catch like items in a video game if you listen well: cybergrind, metalcore, emo, screamo, glitch, grindcore, prog, IDM, New Age, post-vaporwave, noise, smooth jazz fusion, avant-garde, etc. Angel's artistic freedom defies all definitions and labels, by melting them all into something wholly hers.

Take Lavender Networks. The first and last tracks, the longest ones, are obviously takeoff and landing. The first 1'31 of the album squeezes your heart like sustained organ notes do in other music worlds. It's not quite a red herring, but well, the next thing you know, Angel is screaming her rainbow metal rage to a thump, and the synth is playing a whole different kind of melodic realm. Then you glance out the window and there you are in the sky, among heavenly flutes and a shower of glitter. You find out there's no gravity left and the aircraft is actually a spaceship, and you can open the overhead bins with your toes – just wait for all the unusual birds about to fly from it. As for the landing, it will be somehow reminiscent of Anna Meredith's Varmints with its blend of synths and instruments, and hypnotic beat. This will be a surprisingly serene landing, given that, in between takeoff and landing, you should expect some turbulence – also expect to find rainbow puke in your cartoons, Komodo Dragon in your grated carrots, screaming cat-eared flight attendants in the seat pockets, a surprise party in the aisle, a disco ball in the cockpit – which explains it all –, and don't be surprised if the toilet door opens onto the inside of the engines. Ready?

Angel lives with her wife and cats in the suburbs of Chicago and works in her home studio, surrounded by all her instruments, toys, gadgets, and processors: a dream playroom. Fire-Toolz is essentially a studio project, and the songs have more to do with sculptures than with performances. When guests feature on her albums, although they are invited to take part in her vision, she lets them add their own creativity so “It feels like picking up off the ground a painting that was already made, and then using it in your big piece, or something like a collage almost.“ None of the guests featured on Lavender Networks were seeked for marketing purposes: Liverfire is Angel's sister, Sling Beam her wife, Josh Plotner and long-time collaborator Alana Schachtel aka Lipsticism her friends, and harpist Nailah Hunter happens to be a friend of Alana's; as for Zola Jesus and Brothertiger, they are musicians Angel had been a fan of for some time – she had already performed with the latter and remixed one of his tracks. Angel first heard a song by Americana singer Jennifer Holm at the end of a Youtube video by Eddy Burback, and from then on listened to her albums, until she eventually contacted her. “Now imagine a Nashville mom who sings on country albums and in her church band, being asked by an interfaith transfeminine anarchist from Chicago to sing on her screamy, noisy electronic album. She excitedly said yes!“ That's the kind of magic you will encounter in Angel's house.

Some of Angel's collaborators are artists whose music she has mixed and mastered, since she also runs a studio, Angel Hair Audio. Her work as a sound engineer feeds into her creative process. She builds her tracks by producing, mixing, and mastering at the same time, tuning into a neverending flow of ideas and messages, grabbing the ones that don't escape her, one at a time, and manifesting them into musical paintings. On the cover of Lavender Networks, you can see a frame within a frame. The most colorful image in the center might have been the cover itself if the record had been released on another label. Around it, you see red piping like in a factory, but you also see that Angel's world has already taken over the setting: rabbits dance ecstatically, and the fire hydrant that is a recurring motif in her visual world exudes a green slime. Angel found the place she feels home in Warp's catalog, a place where she could hang her own paintings, and follow the red piping playfully. Somehow this Warp debut was meant to be: “The funny thing is that it's been an inside joke with my old label Hausu Mountain, where we would talk about how I would never leave them unless Warp contacted me. We would always joke about that. And we would say it, you know, and it happened.” If we had to play the RIYL game, we could mention Warp artist Oneohtrix Point Never. Other possible friend worlds that could come to mind would be Bolivian-American Chuquimamani-Condori's exuberant mix of Andean music, crunk, metal, ambient and R&B, or the experimental faux-naive noise music made by prolific Australian musician Furchick.

Since Fire-Toolz's albums are somehow Angel's diary, Lavender Networks reflects an eased state of mind, for she has never been closer to pop. In the first track, you can hear her sing, The world is watching & loves you & loves you & loves you more. By the time you reach the end of the album, you feel reconciled – washed, rinsed, spinned –, and whole. What about the singles? Let Angel herself answer this question: ”Balam =^..^= Says IPv09082024 Strawberry Head” is short, and to the point; it's melodic, but also scathing and painful. “And Where Is The Heart? I've Searched My Entire Home (feat. Jennifer Holm)” is just dance pop”, she says, and indeed you can't not dance to it, like on a Decisive Pink track. “The song that we'll focus on on the day of release in May is “Quintessential Fixed Width Unfoldment (feat. Zola Jesus, Brothertiger, Nailah Hunter)”. I consider this one kind of like an orchestral opus of grief and mystery. That one really does feel like a lifelong journey.” You could say that the entire album is one, aboard Angel's spaceship.