Fire-Toolz Walk With Me: Angel Marcloid’s Warp Debut Lavender Networks

Lavender Networks is Angel Marcloid’s first record on Warp Records, and that change of address is the clearest signal that Fire-Toolz has grown louder, brighter, and a little more ambitious without losing the strange core that made followers gasp in the first place.

The very idea raises eyebrows: Fire-Toolz on the same roster as Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada. Then there’s the surprise duet with a country singer on a record by a non-binary, nose-pierced, multicolored-haired producer who traffics in screensaver EDM, Hypercolor death metal, blackened new age, and a dozen other mutant genres that should never share a bar. Has Marcloid sold out? Not even close.

Marcloid’s maximalism only feels more considered here. The blast beats and guttural shrieks still interrupt the Tupperware synths and call-waiting arpeggios, but they slot together with more suppleness than before. The record’s detours are deliberate, not flashy concessions. The country moment comes courtesy of Jennifer Holm, a Nashville mother of two Marcloid found via YouTube incidental music; Holm’s soulful, coffeehouse-ready voice on “And Where Is the Heart? I’ve Searched My Entire Home” is an odd fit on paper and somehow exactly right in practice—an uncanny, humanizing counterpoint that settles into the album like a glove.

That human touch doesn’t neuter the chaos. Later, the R&B-leaning “The Ocean Gratitude Cylinder Peace Necklace Lemonade Flying Free” tears into power-drill, speed-metal territory and still finds time for subterranean sax from Josh Plotner, an abrasive two-minute sprint that somehow breathes. Earlier, “A Demon & Its Spinal Cord Flapping in the Wind” feels like Autechre fronted by Ministry’s Al Jourgensen: hostile, precise, and gleefully unhinged.

The opening statement, “Quintessential Fixed Width Unfoldment,” nearly eight minutes long, summarizes Marcloid’s trick: mismatched parts that insist on cohering. It begins with tranquil Tangerine Dream-style synth pads, explodes into corroded vocals and chugging guitars, then slips into a harplike, Vangelis-adjacent melody and a passage of cybernetic singing from Zola Jesus. A flute even cuts through at one point. These are ingredients that should repel one another; instead they create a strange, uncanny unity.

What keeps the record from feeling like a collage of stunts is Marcloid’s emotional clarity. The textures often read like teenage despair—lacerated guitars, punishing tempos—but the effect leans toward serenity rather than raw aggression. Glistening synths, rubbery rhythms, and radioactive color schemes turn what could be fury into something closer to ecstatic, high-definition joy. Even one wildly overdriven track whose title is composed of emoticons and numbers ends not in noise but in the soft, domestic sound of a cat purring, a tiny, humanizing hum of contentment.

Lavender Networks is still confrontational. It is maximalist and extreme, a mangled freeway pileup of tempos, tones, and aesthetics. But that pileup pulses with intention. Marcloid has not traded in their chaos for polish; they have expanded its vocabulary. Signing to Warp only amplifies the reach. For longtime Fire-Toolz fans, the record feels like growth rather than surrender. For newcomers, it is a bright, wild invitation to a world where the absurd and the sincere are inseparable.