#fire-toolz

[needlejuicerecords]

Why can't I calm down, even when I'm alone?

The Scary Jokes' Uzumaki video premieres TONIGHT, 4/13, at 9PM Eastern/6PM Pacific on their YouTube channel. Be there!!

Directed & animated by Kenzie Bugg (Adult Swim's Tuca & Bertie, A24's #1 Happy Family USA). Song produced by The Scary Jokes & Fire-Toolz.

Join us:

[notvoid]

this song is making me go crazy

[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.

[passionfruitmango]

I'm glad tumblr has a hype amount of folks who have gushed about Fire-Toolz already, in my day to day life next to NOBODY is aware of her!!! Anyway I adore her sound and have so much of her discog in my liked songs. I have this playlist I put songs I /really/ like and have like four from Drip Mental and two from Interbeing 🥹 anyway yeah if you don't know who fire-toolz is go search on spotify and see if you can find something you like!!!

[hybridreviews]

Decibel Boost Album Roundup (MAK Music Edition): JULY

Yep, time for more albums to talk drop that I didn't already review on the main site.

NOW… we’re at the second half of the year and well, it’s been consistent lately. I found albums that I liked, found meh and one that I just disliked. That one would be right here. Yes, I reviewed that album and no, I don’t care if that’s his best album recently but that’s by comparing some of his worse output in the last few years. I also find it funny that Eminem stans are pissed at Pitchfork…

[cherrwysx-music]

♫ Fire-Toolz - Breeze ♫

[pisswizrd]

some of the wildest shit i've ever heard

[00ghosts27]

More Spirit Spit Please

[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.

[needlejuicerecords]

The Scary Jokes' Uzumaki video will have its YouTube premiere this Thursday, 4/13, at 9PM Eastern. Yes, on Homestuck day.

Directed and animated by Kenzie Bugg (Tuca & Bertie, A24), this gorgeous film brings the mind-bending emotional heart of Retinal Bloom to life.

Be there!

[spilladabalia]

Fire-Toolz - It Is Happening Again / Mantra-ing & Golgotha: Double-Bind (Prequel)

Video: Nick Krueger. Sax: Josh Plotner.

[haveyoulistenedtothisalbum-poll]

Tracklist:

It Is Happening Again (Thank You, Council Of Saturn!) • Mantra-ing & Golgotha: Double-Bind (Prequel) • Soaked: Another Name For Everything • I Couldn't Have Been BoRn At ThE wRoNg TiMe Because I Was Never Even Born LOL! • Inlet/Paraklesis • A Thin Place • Paraclete Bhishajyati • The Great Allower • Gleam Beam • Everything & Everywhere Is A Divine Mirror • Above All Else I Want To See • Novaturient Wave-Form Collapse

Spotify ♪ Bandcamp ♪ YouTube