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Angel Marcloid is Fire-Toolz
1.2k Plays1 year ago
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, follows 2021’s sprawling double-album Eternal Home (HAUSMO111) and 2022’s self-released EP I will not use the body’s eyes today. I am upset […] 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.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host Ken Volante. Editor and producer Peter Bauer.
Meet Angel Markloid
00:00:17
Speaker
Hey everybody, this is Ken Vellante with the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast on art and philosophy. Super excited to have this interview with Angel Markloid. Before telling everybody about you, Angel, I just wanted to say hello, let you say hello to the listeners. Hello listeners.
00:00:36
Speaker
That's all I got. Hey, hey, hello is fantastic. Angel is also known under the band Art Project Fire Tools. And also a big fan of your music here and Aidan Vellante, a child who's a musician as well. Just really enjoy your work. And you recently released
Philosophy and Process in Music
00:01:06
Speaker
um at least for a philosophy for me i just gosh i even love your title i'm upset because i see something that is not there uh 2020 free release and uh for me as a thinker that uh basic title uh has me has has me thinking um do you want to talk a little bit about uh your most your most recent uh release and um
00:01:33
Speaker
what you what you're doing with your fire tools project. I guess when I compose and produce music, there's really no specific agenda kind of just play around until something starts coming together. But then
00:01:52
Speaker
at some point during the creation process, like concepts and stuff start to come together. But I never have them beforehand. It's never premeditated. I'd rather just like find what the concept is going to be rather than creating it, you know, just intuitively, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, but I mean, making music, I just it's just a little adventure into a new place with every song.
00:02:21
Speaker
But then lyrically, I think that's where the concepts and stuff start as I'm writing, yeah.
Musical Diversity and Styles
00:02:31
Speaker
Yeah, I'm gonna...
00:02:34
Speaker
just make a statement. And it's just like my general reaction in listening to music, at least when I first listened to it, stylistically that it moves and flows into so many different areas. And for me, I'm fascinated by the fact that it's beautiful and you pull it off. It's something that other musicians
00:03:00
Speaker
try and it's tough to have all those elements hang together. So the question is, how do you end up succeeding in that way where where others don't? I'm not really sure what the difference is. I mean, of course, it's subjective. I mean, I've gotten several reviews in the past where people are just like, I don't know what's going on. There's just random stuff being pieced together. I don't even
00:03:31
Speaker
I can't enjoy this. So I mean, I think it works. And then some people agree. And that's great. There's really, I don't have a method to make it good. I just make what comes out. And if people think that's good, that's great. I think it's good. I usually like to just see the results of my experiment that I've been tweaking
00:04:01
Speaker
for months. If it just feels good, then that's it. I mean, that's my genre of music that I like or want to listen to or make. So there's no purposeful, I got to make this work somehow kind of thought process. I don't think like that at all. I don't even
00:04:29
Speaker
know if it works. I don't even think about that.
Unstructured Creativity
00:04:34
Speaker
Yeah, I can honestly really relate to how you described all of it because I make music as well and I make metal and I kind of just go by the same thing.
00:04:52
Speaker
My first couple releases kind of followed a similar structure but I'm currently working on putting together an album and it's just gone in so many different directions and it's just like
00:05:06
Speaker
I don't really have like a plan before. Like I just kind of just piece together what's coming out of me musically and then just like I'll put lyrics to it, you know, to give it some sort of theme and then I'll give it a title and everything and then I put it out. But there's usually not any sort of like structure beforehand. So like I really related to like how you said you put your songs together and I thought that was really cool.
00:05:34
Speaker
Thanks. I heard you say, you talked about it as if you didn't say, I took it in so many directions. You say, it went in so many directions. So it kind of gives that sense of a lot of it probably wasn't intentional. It's just what came out. At least it feels to me that I'm sort of pulled in different directions, because it doesn't feel like me that's doing it. So then I'm like, well, what is?
00:06:05
Speaker
So I'm not trying to say the music is like, you know, that makes it like, I don't know, divine or something. I mean, I guess I think it is. But yeah, I mean, just because something flows out of you intuitively doesn't mean that it's good, but it's very real, I guess.
00:06:28
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's it's still like unique to you. And like, sometimes I'll like, I'll like get an influence from like, from a song or like just like a specific part of a song that's like, I want to create like a song that's like that. And then maybe like the first like 30 seconds will end up sounding somewhat like it. And then the rest of the song is just all over the place with so many different sounds and everything. And
00:06:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's a it's a great feeling to just kind of like have everything just kind of pieced together in a different way. You know, like some things come in from like other places like where you're at because yeah, I mean, I usually I pieced together like my songs like like over the span of like maybe like a week or so. So like different ideas can so many different ideas can come in the span of a week. And yeah, yeah.
Exploring the Meaning of Art
00:07:24
Speaker
It's great. I wanted to ask you, Angel, when you're talking about what you're putting together and an experience or feeling like that, it's an experiment. I want to tie that to art. And the question is, what is art? And related to that, when you finish your song,
00:07:54
Speaker
It's moved away from maybe an experiment type of stage and it's in a different stage as are. What are your thoughts on that? It really feels like it gets super solidified at some point. And I feel like the statement's been made and it's been just tweaked to death. I love tweaking process. It's like my favorite thing. People say commit to something and move on, but now I'm going to mess with it forever. It's a lot of fun to do that.
00:08:24
Speaker
I guess I don't really know what art is, but there's things I hear and see and sometimes smell and touch that makes me feel something and there's something about it that's like beautiful and it
00:08:51
Speaker
seems creative, like a creative...
00:08:56
Speaker
force or something created it. You know, I just I have a lake out front of my house and sometimes they're like, like geese and different species of birds and swans or whatever. And like, I'm looking out over there and like feeling so much peace and tranquility. And I'm just like, well, is that art? And then some people would argue that it's not because it's intention that matters. But then I zoom out and I'm just like, well, what if
00:09:25
Speaker
one of the meanings of all this was beauty and that was intentional, which is I know I'm getting a little spiritual, but that's that's where I live. So no, it's good. We're far. This is this is the thread we go for. I also kind of just like don't care what art is. I just like that's a that's a discussion that I guess I kind of
00:09:51
Speaker
hate and I don't know if it's if there's much point in it. I mean, we just enjoy things that we see either some person made it or it's more natural. I don't know, like
00:10:03
Speaker
Who really cares? Yeah No, I mean there's there's there's There's there's a huge piece to there's a huge piece to that because I think that like I can even ask that question and it could be You know what is art and there could be a stodgy definition which we all hold on to you know in the sense of being like well I
00:10:26
Speaker
like maybe the way it's been posed is just kind of like wrong over the time. But yeah, I wanted to ask you, I know some with parents and like musical influence in the back, I know you're around music growing up.
Angel's Musical Journey
00:10:44
Speaker
When did you see yourself as an artist or musician, whatever word that you use, when did you see yourself as that in your identity?
00:11:09
Speaker
pots and pans with wooden spoons and trash cans and stuff. And then I had some family member or family friend or some something give me an acoustic guitar. I think it was classical. I'm pretty sure that they were nylon strings, but maybe not. You know, just being like a toddler, I have it in my like laying down in my lap.
00:11:20
Speaker
I don't remember a starting point because I feel like it's always been there.
00:11:32
Speaker
rather than holding it correctly because I was just so small. And I don't know, just plucking the strings and hitting them with things. Whether I considered myself a musician or not, whether there was an identity word or not, I just feel like I was just born for music. I don't know anything else. I can't imagine a life where I wasn't making it.
00:12:03
Speaker
So yeah, no, no real starting point. And then I also like, I think that labels and stuff can are like useful, because if you say musician or artist, then you know, people understand that you're trying to communicate that you make music or art. And then at the same time, I feel like, you know, kind of like I said about what is art, like, I don't really
00:12:29
Speaker
I don't really care like about identity words. I mean, like being trans, obviously like they're important in some ways, but I feel like just zoomed out ultimately, like I don't feel like any labels. I just feel like this sort of amorphous like thing. I don't really feel a gender and don't really care what I call myself. I'm just kind of existing.
Genres and Identity Complexity
00:13:00
Speaker
Yeah, I can 100% relate to that, especially on the music side and everything. I started making music, actually releasing it back in January.
00:13:21
Speaker
And there's been a lot of times that I've tried to put my music up and give a description to it. And it never feels right. I feel like I just create what I want to create. And it just comes out. So it's like...
00:13:36
Speaker
you know, I'll, I'll give it like 1000 genre titles. Like I think I have one of my EPs up is like melodic black metal with elements of shoegaze and indie rock and all of this. And it's like, I don't think that's enough. Or I think that or maybe that might be too much. I'm not sure. But it's it's just what it is. You know? Yeah, I think that's cool. I mean, my
00:14:00
Speaker
Bandcamp genre tags on all my releases, I always max them out. You know, so many to say. Yeah, I mean, I love the idea of indie rock and black metal being together. It sounds really cool. Yeah, yeah. I think that all really started for me, like, because I've always been a huge fan of black metal. But like, I think we're like,
00:14:29
Speaker
things started to click for me where I can piece certain other parts of music together was when I heard Sun Bather by Def Heaven for the first time. That was just like, oh my God. You're like, you can do that? Yeah. I can make black metal, but make it sound beautiful and melodic at the same time. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, they definitely broke some new ground. There are bands doing
00:14:58
Speaker
similar things for a long time, but they're the ones who are responsible for changing the Black Metal scene or at least creating sort of a new one where a bunch of people can go back to the old stuff and enjoy it, but they're also very open to really strong variations on that. There was a band
00:15:22
Speaker
like a blackened shoegaze band called Crooked Next that a couple of my friends were in.
00:15:29
Speaker
They don't have very much material online, but they have a split and then I think maybe some other stuff. It was kind of like a little, instead of shoegaze, it was kind of a little like, like gothy post-punk, like maybe like some mid-era like cure kind of sound, but like all of the vocals were like tortured shrieks, like buried in the background with a bunch of reverb on them.
00:15:55
Speaker
So yeah, you should just like type their name into like YouTube or something. There's there's probably stuff up there I think you'd like it. It's pretty lo-fi but it's It's amazing and they were doing it a long time ago. So nice. Yeah Definitely want to check that out angel. I got We're gonna be listeners. We can be cutting to a track from fire tools named I was born at the wrong time before we go into that angel, uh
00:16:23
Speaker
we born too early or born too late? Oh, it's not really, it's not really about being late or, or early. It just, uh, it's more about just like feeling like this ain't it for like more like existential reasons, not really like complaints about like, you know, living under capitalism or something. It's more,
00:16:50
Speaker
it's definitely more existential than that. And it's not something I actually feel at all or believe, but a lot of times my songs will just be, I'll pick
00:17:01
Speaker
One part of myself that has a certain point of view that has a certain problem or has a certain goal And just like make a song from that perspective um And I I have this I have this tattoo it says people equal shit
Emotional Outlets in Music
00:17:16
Speaker
on it. It's like a slipknot reference and like That's not how I think at all But there's this part of me that like, you know hates
00:17:28
Speaker
or is angry about the things that people have done to me and do to the world that's like pissed off and I hate them, but that's just a little part. And it's integrated into all the other parts. I'm not just coming from that part. I mean, we can sort of get trapped in a part for sure and just like be coming from there.
00:17:52
Speaker
only being able to think that way. But yeah, I try to just, it's compartmentalized. It's just like, right here to sort of remind me of that rage, I guess. Yeah, yeah. We're gonna, we're gonna cut to, listen, we cut to I was born at the wrong time by fire tools, and we'll be back in just a bit.
00:18:29
Speaker
you
00:21:20
Speaker
Oh...
00:22:14
Speaker
Oh.
00:23:13
Speaker
Thank you very much.
00:23:20
Speaker
Air to Mother Earth. Six inches of soil fainted till they grow up. Hi, the beauty of you is...
00:23:43
Speaker
Great Bay Aquarium, which was my first home in the United States, was living in those canneries as a little girl. So good to see you all.
00:24:22
Speaker
Thank you fire tools.
00:24:25
Speaker
You're welcome. I just, I just love this, the synths on that song. It's, it's, it's insane. If I can ask, uh, like what dog do you use? And like, what, I do everything in logic, logic, man. I've been trying to, I've been trying to learn logic recently. I've always, I've done all my music and stuff like that on apple studio. So it's been, uh, it's been an interesting transition.
00:24:53
Speaker
Yeah, that's a lot different. FL Studio and Logic is a lot different. Probably the only thing further from that is like maybe Pro Tools. Yeah, I just use Logic for everything because it's great for mixing too. And I do that for a living and also for myself. And I just like to mix and compose at the same time.
00:25:21
Speaker
Yeah, I've gotten really used to it. I have no interest in Switching to anything else or trying anything else because I know this really well and I don't want to fix anything that isn't broken. So Yeah, yeah We're speaking with angel Mark Lloyd of fire tools. Um, tell us about Tell us about fire tools live. I think you have an upcoming show. What's that look like?
Live Performances and Influences
00:25:46
Speaker
Yeah, I have one on the 29th. I know this will be out after that. 29th of September. I'm just playing a show at a place I've played a bunch of times called DADS. It stands for Digital Audio. That was a digital audio demo space. Yeah.
00:25:48
Speaker
I
00:26:11
Speaker
I have a friends band coming into town from Nashville, Flush Eater, and they need a show for their Chicago date, so I'm playing with them. What does that look like? Like you performing live? Well, a lot of my performance is actually just backing tracks because there's just, there's no way to
00:26:34
Speaker
you know, recreate all of that life. I mean, the way that it's constructed is more like a sculpture. I don't really, a lot of times, hit record and perform the song in any way. It's all just kind of built. So it's like asking somebody to perform a sculpture, the same exact sculpture that you made. I mean, I guess you could do that. I don't want to do that.
00:27:03
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of it's backing tracks, but I play all the guitar live and I do all the vocals live. And I spend a lot of my energy when performing vocals, playing with effects and stuff like that, because the effects I put on my voice change a lot. And I do some synth parts too. So I basically go between guitar to synth and vocals.
00:27:34
Speaker
but everything else is just on my laptop. And then I play all my music videos live, like project them onto a screen. Yeah, and that's kind of how it is. And there's not much else to it. I wish I was being a little bit more hands-on in making the music, but like, yeah, like I said, it's sculpted and constructed. It's not really,
00:28:02
Speaker
Performable and the vocals that I do live they they can they tend to sound different than they do on the records because I'm using effects pedals and stuff that I didn't even use on the record. So I'm kind of just Trying to do something semi-similar I guess when possible and other times not possible so And where's the performance It's in Chicago in How was it called I think it's in Bridgeport
00:28:31
Speaker
Do you know why I was wondering as knowing and thinking about Chicago as far as industrial sound, why it ends up being so prominent and placed in the Midwest and Chicago? Yeah, I think that the industrial nature of Chicago, and there's other places that don't feel that way at all, but there's plenty of that there.
00:28:59
Speaker
Also, Milwaukee and Detroit, and especially Cleveland, Ohio, I think really does influence people's, at least they're like industrial music projects or whatever. It's definitely influential. I mean, I'm thinking of like a noise project called Grain Belt.
00:29:21
Speaker
It's just like very, you know, very Midwest and rusty industrial sounding. Their name is anyway. So like, that doesn't really influence me though. Like my foray into industrial when I was really young was just like Nine Inch Nails mostly, and then some other stuff.
00:29:50
Speaker
techno stuff too. But yeah, I get inspired and influenced a lot more by more natural things, you know, nature and animals and stuff like that. That's kind of like, even though the sounds might be pretty harsh sometimes, that's kind of like the place I'm coming from most most of the time. But I do love industrial music and I love noise and I love aggressive, nasty sounding music. But
00:30:19
Speaker
It's like nature is making that, not some coal mine or, you know, industrial factory or something. I could, I could feel about like in the area where it feels, lived some time in Wisconsin as, as has Aiden. And when I first got to Milwaukee,
00:30:42
Speaker
and the like metal industrial, like maybe how it felt and where it was and how big the scene was. And, you know, it was just different. And in the Pacific Northwest now in Oregon,
00:30:59
Speaker
I think maybe the area in my natural propensity moving towards like doom, this kind of like very sticky, rainy, dope laden Pacific Northwest, like feel to it. And it like, it feels like it comes out of like the, the area and there's an organic piece to it that I feel more out here on the, when you were talking about, you know, the organic inorganic pieces. It's pretty fascinating when it comes to metal and that sound.
00:31:30
Speaker
Yeah, I wonder if that's like where my more like, like harsher industrial kind of side comes from. And my music is just from me living in the Midwest for so many years. Yeah, I'm sure I grew up in Maryland.
00:31:49
Speaker
I didn't move here until 2012. So I spent a good 27 years in Maryland and the area definitely factored in to my music. I mean, we didn't live in like a rural area or anything, but it was just, you know, plenty of trees and grass and everything, birds were by like a little bay and some rivers.
00:32:19
Speaker
Yeah, when I moved here, when I moved to the city, it was definitely like culture shock. Um, and eventually I figured out like, I can't do this. I can't live here. So I ended up moving out into the suburbs and that's, that's where I am now. I'm a suburban person. I definitely get a lot of, uh, natural inspiration for being in areas like that. Yeah. Well, when you even talking about, you know, like what is our in like,
00:32:48
Speaker
know like the lake or like a a senior experience and right and maybe there's peace to it or you don't feel yourself you feel like part of the whole and like on the what is our bit and about attention intention I you know it's a conceptual debate but it's that
Art: Intention vs. Accidents
00:33:06
Speaker
for those more like more believing is that there is an author to those natural scenes and that there's art within that where others would be like, you absolutely have to have provable intention of what somebody's trying to make. Like art is an accident. And I think that's where it's like, it can get kind of fascinating because I would say is like sitting in front of the lake, seeing it that way and having that type of experience, I'd be like, well, if that's not fucking art, then like
00:33:34
Speaker
What is you know? Yeah, and there and you know that I feel like there was an intention to it like even if you don't have any like Spiritual side and you just kind of think of it as like an accident then it was Created by like the Big Bang, you know, it was like that. This is just where it's ended up, you know, the Big Bang is still happening if that theory is correct and it's it wasn't something that happened a long time ago, it's
00:34:04
Speaker
still happening. So in that way, industrial factories, I guess you could call organic in the end. So world and then humans and then that's what they ended up doing. But yeah, it's like, I don't understand why you would want to limit art to
00:34:30
Speaker
that kind of intention. It just, it seems so arbitrary, you know, because if you put that there, then you do look out over the lake and your mind is just like, that's not art. You know, you can consider it beautiful, but like your mind is disqualifying that. And that's just like, that just sounds like annoying and pointless. And so I think that art among many other
00:34:59
Speaker
things just don't have an objective definition because nobody can agree on it. There are certain things that I think do have an objective definition and those words, you know, everybody pretty much agrees that they mean the same thing. But art is one of those words where like nobody thinks of it the same way. So how about there's just not a definition? How about it's just whatever we want it to be?
00:35:25
Speaker
Yeah. I think, I have to say, Angel, I think in your recent comments, you've answered the why is there something rather than nothing question. This is the first time in a while I've gotten to the point when I would ask and I'm not going to ask it again because
00:35:47
Speaker
because you answered it. I really liked just in talking about with nature and art. There's one thing I wanted to say is that my favorite film is Barton Fink. And it doesn't matter for listeners if you've seen it or not, but there's this setup at the end where the filmmakers are basically
00:36:13
Speaker
filming an important scene that you've seen that's been a painting, right? So it's like just a beautiful, regular scene in front of the ocean. And it's almost set up completely perfectly. And I think
00:36:27
Speaker
The creators, the Coen brothers, knew they had the shot, that they had captured the perfect shot. And then right towards the end, there's a bird that comes through the screen and smashes into the water, and then it's done. And it's just a picturesque scene.
00:36:44
Speaker
I thought about that so much about like when you see something, you're experienced something and you have this experience and then almost that there's something that breaks you out of it and it kind of like breaks you out of it at the end. But just kind of like honoring experience in and of itself, right?
00:37:08
Speaker
the music experience or art experience.
Where to Find Angel's Work
00:37:12
Speaker
Angel, where do folks go to find fire tools or the art that you create, things that you work on? Where do people look to get acquainted and get more of what we're talking about? So I know people are more akin these days to social networks and stuff like that than they are like websites.
00:37:33
Speaker
Back in my day, we just had websites, but I do think a really good way to find all my stuff is to go to my website, and then you'll find links to everything, Twitter and Instagram and Discord and all that kind of stuff, YouTube. I have angelmarcloy.com, which is
00:37:57
Speaker
more just about all the things I do. And then there's a firetools.com as well as just firetools focus. And there's a hyphen in there. So it's fire hyphen tools with a z.com. So either one of those websites, you'll end up being directed to pretty much whatever, whatever has to do with me on the internet. Yeah, yeah, I want to
Closing Reflections
00:38:22
Speaker
I want to thank Angel Aiden I've been talking about that you want to know this but talking about this episode and rapping about it and, and listen to music and sharing notes I just want to want to thank you for for spending for spending time with us.
00:38:37
Speaker
It is a particular thrill enjoying your music from afar and then be able to connect with you and talk about these cool things. And listeners too, as far as Aiden, Volante Music Project, Polybius as well, P-O-L-Y-B-I-U-S. All caps, all caps. All caps, sorry.
00:38:58
Speaker
Very important. But I think even talking with both of you about these questions and hearing artists and like the creation and some of the surprises you get as a creator from what people are hearing and seeing. So I just really want to thank you for your time, Angel, and really giving us a peek inside of your art and your mind.
00:39:26
Speaker
fire tools. Thank you for the incredible art that you make every day. Thank you. Appreciate it. You take care. It's great to see you. Yeah, great to see you too. Bye.
00:42:27
Speaker
Oh!
00:43:04
Speaker
you
00:45:30
Speaker
This is something rather than nothing.