The question must be asked: Has Fire-Toolz sold out? After all, Lavender Networks marks producer, shredder, singer, and beatmaker Angel Marcloid’s debut on Warp Records, which puts her in the company of Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada. And one track prominently features a country singer, a drastic departure from the usual Fire-Toolz mélange of screensaver EDM, Hypercolor death metal, blackened new age, and copious other mutant genres that usually don’t mix. But though Marcloid has continued to refine her extravagant, gonzo, and lurid sound—the blast beats and guttural shrieks slot into the Tupperware synths and call-waiting arpeggios with more supple flexibility than ever before—Lavender Networks is still far from commercial.
That country singer, for instance, is not a Kacey Musgraves-level name, but someone whom Marcloid discovered via YouTube video’s incidental music. Nashville’s Jennifer Holm, mother of two and a crinkly smiler, according to her website, might be considered an odd presence on an album by a non-binary mystical anarchist with a nose piercing and multicolored hair, but her soulful coffeehouse vocals on “And Where Is the Heart? I’ve Searched My Entire Home” fit the groove like a pickleball glove. Following that is the surprisingly effective R&B-inflected track “The Ocean Gratitude Cylinder Peace Necklace Lemonade Flying Free,” a power-drill, speed-metal thrasher that makes room for some subterranean sax (courtesy of Josh Plotner) in its two whiplash-inducing minutes. The song before Holm’s track, “A Demon & Its Spinal Cord Flapping in the Wind,” sounds like Autechre fronted by Ministry’s Al Jourgensen. It’s a lot to handle, but somehow, Marcloid makes the chaos flow.
The music of Fire-Toolz is not for the faint of heart. It’s maximalist and extreme, a massive, mangled freeway pileup of tempos, tones, styles, and aesthetics, all jammed together and pulsing with a strange, violent energy. Opening track “Quintessential Fixed Width Unfoldment,” the longest on the album at nearly eight minutes, begins with some tranquil Tangerine Dream synth chords before corroded vocals and chugging guitars blast open the middle section. At the same time, there’s a harplike, Vangelis-adjacent melody and some cybernetic singing from arty chanteuse Zola Jesus. A flute enters the mix at one point. These elements shouldn’t gel—in fact, they should actively work against each other, like oil and water or misaligned magnets. But what should be a hyperactive, frenetic, and fractured mess instead has a curious, uncanny unity.
The secret might lie in Marcloid’s emotional openness and clarity of purpose. Though her music can have the lacerated textures and punishing pace of teenage despair, instead of negative aggression, we get serenity and light. Marcloid may often employ the sonic language of misery and darkness, but her glistening synths, rubbery rhythms, and radioactive colors transform a raging storm into an expression of radiant, high-definition joy. One excessively overdriven track whose title involves emoticons and numbers ends with the sound of a cat purring, a hum of contentment incarnate. Fire-Toolz may have gotten bigger and brighter, but Marcloid doesn’t need to sell out. She’s already got everything she wants.