The music of Fire-Toolz presents producer/vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Angel Marcloid in a state of constant flux and compositional overload. In contrast to more style-specific projects including the Weather Channel-inspired jazz fusion / prog of Nonlocal Forecast or the vaporous processed sample collages of MindSpring Memories (to name a few), the music of Fire-Toolz finds Marcloid drawing from every corner of experience and expertise in order to craft genre-agnostic works that bridge together far-flung disciplines into a stunning composite whole. I will not use the body’s eyes today. arrives as an EP-length release self-issued by Marcloid on CD and digital media formats. It follows four full-length albums on the label Hausu Mountain, most recently the double LP Eternal Home (2021), in addition to a catalog of releases with labels like Orange Milk, Big Money Cybergrind, and Kitty On Fire, among others. Clocking in at around thirty minutes in length, I will not use the body’s eyes today. stands as a relatively compact song cycle that nonetheless continues the Fire-Toolz project’s long-standing capacity to confound and bewitch listeners with each hairpin turn in style and compositional arc. Containing more instrumental pieces in relation to its total duration than any Fire-Toolz release to date, the EP lets Marcloid sink into swathes of textural sculpting and ambient soundscaping that sit alongside some of the artist’s most labyrinthine songwriting in the combinatory style that has come to characterize much of the project’s catalog. As a one-person “band” brought to life by Marcloid’s performances on synths, guitar, bass, programmed/electronic drums, and software VSTs, along with all manner of production and processing techniques, Marcloid conjures up mental images of an enormous spread of instrumentalists performing hyper-baroque progressive music on a floating cybernetic stage. At the same time, the reality of Fire-Toolz songcraft casts the image of one artist seated in the computer room as night falls, poring over a vast spread of recorded sound sources in the digital workspace and crafting collage-like pieces laden with sudden upheavals in tone and narrative structure. As impossible as it is to succinctly characterize any Fire-Toolz track, much less the chimeric sum total of the project as a whole, I will not use the body’s eyes today. offers listeners a world map of relative touchstones to steer them down Marcloid’s winding paths. Networks of smeared synth drones lace together with peals of saxophone before cresting into denouements of granular glitchery. On EP centerpiece “Soda Lake With Game Genie,” Marcloid explores the improbable interstices between 80s pop, jazz fusion, black metal, and progressive rock — a combination that illustrates the maximal tendencies of the Fire-Toolz project, but in a bombastic form here that testifies to Marcloid’s growing capacity to tug at our heartstrings until they burst. “Vedic Software ~ Wet Interfacing” gives Marcloid a chance to go full industrial, as lacerating screams flit around syncopated drum grooves and an ever-evolving bassline before breaking rank and sinking into pure electro-acoustic collage. On “A Moon In The Morning,” Marcloid’s palette of textures crests into sizzling distortion that overtakes the entire mix and fries the vocal performance to an even more terrifying demonoid howl, all struck through with harsh stabs of orchestral MIDI strings. Driving beat passages that channel tropes of Italo-disco, techno, and EBM appear within the chaos just as readily as instrumental breakdowns that highlight the long sustain of a plaintive acoustic guitar arrangement. Discussing the influences channeled into the lyrics of I will not use the body’s eyes today., Marcloid draws up an index just as wide-ranging as the musical styles incorporated into the album’s production. In the artist’s words: “Vedic philosophy; Christian mysticism; fear of abandonment; emotional disconnection; attachment insecurity; self-sabotage; spiritual inclinations of consciousness; trauma healing; shame; emotional safety; connection to/interaction with God/source/spirit.” One gets the sense from listening to Fire-Toolz that Marcloid has committed to a path of self-education and personal development, in the form of both a forever-expanding toolbox of musical disciplines, and in a concordant pursuit of diverse philosophies and theologies that all funnel into an omni-directional perception of the world and its mysteries. Fire-Toolz embodies the impulse to always be adding more to the reservoir, to temper pre-existing conceptions with new knowledge or perspectives, to believe that the vessel always has room to expand — that no amount of new data or new emotion could ever break that which has no limits to begin with.
Florida-born Doechii’s breakthrough hit (2020’s “Yucky Blucky Fruitcake,” with a title inspired by a Junie B. Jones book) introduced the rapper as a schoolgirl who self-actualizes before our eyes; she starts off an awkward kid doing bedroom karaoke to Paramore, and by the end, she’s proudly proclaiming, “I am a Black girl who beat the statistics.” Since then, she’s performed on late-night talk shows and awards stages and signed with Kendrick Lamar’s Top Dawg Entertainment. There’s no sign of that shy schoolgirl on *she / her / black bitch*, her third EP. Instead, she’s in boss mode—hitting on girls, blowing money fast, and feeling herself. The highlight is a remix of her bad-girl anthem “Persuasive,” a silky-smooth, two-step number with an assist from SZA.**
