#Fire Toolz

[needlejuicerecords]

The Scary Jokes' Retinal Bloom is finally here! Produced by genre-defying sound magician Fire-Toolz, Retinal Bloom will take you on a journey through lush dreampop and surreal nightmares. Stream it everywhere you can hear music, and pick up a physical copy today!

[sableleatherywingsopeninthe711]

got tagged by @adistortion to make a playlist with every letter of my URL, this was so fun :)

i tag @megapotion @hawkishpebble @cacamatsu-salsa and anyone else who wants to do it!

[shepfax]

thank you trans women for inventing and carrying every subgenre of electronic music

[darkarfs]

Doing some cleaning up, I found THIS. Forgot that I bought it. I feel like everyone has a self-help phase in their life where they invest too much time in this shit. (Ask me about the Eckhardt Tolle and Tim Ferriss books I own. Wait, no, don't.) I dunno. I need some positivity in my life because of this foot thing. I'm genuinely worried that this damage to my foot is permanent, and by the time I get a diagnosis it'll be irreversible. Nerve damage? Blood clots? POSSIBLE SURGERY? Resisting pain is exhausting, friends. But I've only ever been hopeful. <3

[bluetapes]

Part 6 of a series interrogating the track titles for Kaijupop, the debut album of my Soft-Bodied Humans project.

The album is available on LP and digital from Gang of Ducks.

Track 6: Bat People

--

The Bat People (人間コウモリ Ningen kōmori, lit. Human Bat) are eutherian humanoid kaiju created by Toho that first appeared in the 1969 Toho film, Latitude Zero.

--

I was first introduced to the expansive sonic universe of Angel Marcloid via Fire-Toolz’ 2018 classic Skinless X-1.

I was stunned that a small label like Hausu Mountain could apparently find the resources to hire a pro-level producer, as the album SOUNDED like it had been cooked up in a million-dollar recording studio somewhere.

I was also stunned to find that not only all of the production work was done by the artist themselves, but that Angel’s own mixing and mastering services were available at very reasonable cost, an offer I immediately took up when I started my Cut A Lonely Figure and Soft-Bodied Humans music projects.

Angel wove her magic on the kaiju releases and, as I was approaching all of my favourite vocalists regarding contributing to the project, it was completely logical that I would offer her a track to vocal, and I was ecstatic when she agreed.

I explained that the music was constructed out of samples from old kaiju films and that there was ‘very loose’ theme about monsters that could be interpreted as literally or abstractly as you liked, and Angel was like ‘what if the monsters are like my personal demons?!’ and I was like yes 100% make it so.

Angel’s track on Kaijupop, Bat People, adds something searingly emotional to the project that it really needed. Musically, too, it is typically untypical – Angel unloads a shapeshifting, FX-treated, industrial howl of naked feeling over one of the project’s more atmospheric tracks.

Bat People sits perfectly between the abstract, expressive textures of Anna Homler’s Battra and the thudding, menacing shades of extreme metal in Abysmal Growl of Despair’s Minos, in one of the album’s most exciting sequences.

A beautiful, exhilarating exorcism of bad energy.

[pissw1zard]

some of the wildest shit i've ever heard

[00ghosts27]

More Spirit Spit Please

[needlejuicerecords]

PRE-SAVE ON SPOTIFY!

PRE-ORDER DIGITAL ON BANDCAMP!

Journey through the dreamy and sinister psychedelic universe of Retinal Bloom, the latest album from The Scary Jokes. Liz Lehman confronts threats both external and existential, conjuring a set that simmers with passion and rage. Co-produced with Fire-Toolz (Angel Marcloid), Retinal Bloom is The Scary Jokes’ most aesthetically ambitious album yet, augmenting their trademark bedroom pop approach with distortion, guitar, drums and vintage synths.

Retinal Bloom releases May 26, 2023!

Pre-order NOW on vinyl, CD and cassette!

[sinceileftyoublog]

Kate NV & Fire-Toolz Live Show Review: 4/6, Sleeping Village, Chicago

BY JORDAN MAINZER

On her latest album WOW (RVNG Intl.), Russian pop singer Kate NV--the same person who once called her bicycle her best friend--eschews surefire humanism in favor of dropping us into a world of digitized inanimate objects. The sounds she presents, sometimes from Found Sound Nation’s Broken Orchestra sample pack, others field recordings, are inviting because they’re familiar, yet not 100% recognizable. Orchestral instruments rub elbows with video game music and clanging silverware on “confessions at the dinner table”, while goofy sitcom motif slap basslines pop up in “oni (they)” and “d d don’t”. The record’s title appropriately reflects the sense of wonder you get from listening to the record, and clearly the mindset Kate Shilonosova occupied when constructing it.

During her Chicago live debut Thursday night at Sleeping Village, Shilonosova actually played mostly songs from 2020′s Room for the Moon, her planned tours for that album cancelled due to the pandemic. She brought the same joyousness that pervades WOW into the minimalist dance of its predecessor. Her robotic, yet aerobic dance moves from the opening notes of “Not Not Not”, through the funky bass and rubbery synths of “Sayonara”, and for the rest of the set fit alongside the roomy beats of the music, even as swirling saxophone, orchestral synth, and blissful arpeggios filled the spaces in between. As jubilant as the music itself, Shilonosova was grateful to be in the room, and for the night, it felt like we were here best friends.

It’s perhaps strange to find Kate NV’s music minimal, but it certainly was compared to the brilliant maximalism of her opener, Chicago mastermind Fire-Toolz. Angel Marcloid’s trademark mix of disparate influences and sounds, everything from smooth jazz saxophone to arena rock guitars and death metal blastbeats and vocals, is far from throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. Even though Marcloid, at the end of the set, displayed the announcement that the new Fire-Toolz album, I am upset because I see something that is not there. (Hausu Mountain), would be out the next day “on the Internet where I live,” Fire-Toolz’ music is far more carefully curated than a lot of internet-brained hyperpop. Sure, F-T songs are sometimes like New Age-meets-screamo vignettes, presented in front of visuals that range from deer antlers to uncanny alien people to bootleg-looking Pixar creatures. On paper, it sounds unfiltered, but that it seems straight from the mind of Marcloid to the audience is what makes the music honest and interesting. Marcloid’s choice on I am upset to sing clean vocals makes tracks like “Mantra-ing & Golgotha: Double-Bind (Prequel)” affecting, and the same emotive performance style elevated old tracks like “Soda Lake With Game Genie”, a stadium-sized piano ballad. Kate NV and Fire-Toolz may not be headlining stadiums, but their ideas could fill a million universes.

[iowadream]

remember when ja'mal green doxxed a guy bc he took a picture of a bus

[baphofemme]

the new fob album is coming out in two days, my spotify wrapped is pretty much set in stone