Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

LP-HAUSMO-131

Colour

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music US

Limited edition

Release date

2024-01-12

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier US

Redeye

Tax rate US

Sales:8.875

UPC / Barcode

634457160507

Total Cap

Artist

Fire-Toolz

Genre US

Electronic

Label US

Hausu Mountain

Producer / composer / multi-instrumentalist Angel Marcloid records music under the moniker Fire-Toolz. With a diverse range of musical aliases, Fire-Toolz remains the central focus of this prolific artist's universe. Fire-Toolz has released several full-length albums 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.

Newest Listed Items

Producer / composer / multi-instrumentalist Angel Marcloid records music under the moniker Fire-Toolz. Though Marcloid’s output emerges in a litany of distinct aliases and projects — from the jazz fusion / new age of Nonlocal Forecast to the vaporous nostalgia of MindSpring Memories — the Fire-Toolz catalog remains the central focus of the prolific artist’s musical universe and a home for Marcloid’s most ambitious and combinatory work. I am upset because I see something that is not there, the fifth Fire-Toolz album to join the Hausu Mountain catalog since 2017, offers listeners a prismatic cross-section of juxtaposed genres and compositional contortions to explore, maintaining Fire-Toolz’s signature density and complexity while tightening the scope of Marcloid’s experimentation into the project’s most focused song cycle to date. Perhaps more than any previous Fire-Toolz album, I am upset […] presents some form of pop music, carried in Marcloid’s passages of clean vocals, in the bright synth and keyboard tones that animate its tracks, in the yearning saxophone lines that pour into view and whisk the narrative onto a new path. The format of a one-person “band” carries a different weight in a landscape of solo artists crafting abstract modernist productions that don’t allude in the slightest to various twentieth-century rock-related traditions. Fire-Toolz exists on both sides of this divide. 

The music of Fire-Toolz draws energy on a moment-to-moment basis 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 holistic, as if such compositional gambits were already logical to begin with. Bursts of harsh textural noise cut into drifts of new age synth bliss, while miniature screamo verses bookend passages of hyper-technical jazz fusion.

I am upset because I see something that is not there.

Music US

Discover I am upset because I see something that is not there. by Fire-Toolz. A prismatic cross-section of genres and compositional contortions to explore. Available on Hausu Mountain.