Fire-Toolz on Metalcore, Moving, and the Endless Flow of Productivity

This is a free post from Larry Fitzmaurice's Last Donut of the Night newsletter. Paid subscribers get one or two email-only Baker's Dozens every week featuring music I've been listening to and some critical observations around it. Subscriptions currently run $3/month or $30/year, hit one of those little pink buttons on the right side of your screen to tap in, you won't regret it.

Here's what's going down today: I'm a huge fan of Angel Marcloid's digital-onslaught musical style as Fire-Toolz, and her Warp debut Lavender Networks, which just dropped last month, is a fresh batch of revelations from one of the most fascinating electronic artists currently working in North America. Angel gets her two-timers jacket today when it comes to newsletter appearances: I had her here nearly five years ago (man, time flies) and with interview skills that I would say have vastly improved since then (it really is hard evolving in public, y'all), I was more than happy to have Angel in the ring again. The result was a fascinating and enlightening chat that I'm delighted to bring to you today. Check it out:

Hey Angel, how's it going today?
Pretty good. I'm just sitting in my car. I was gonna do this in my studio, but I was on the phone with a client-slash-friend and we were discussing how good I thought the mix was—and how bad she thought it was. I was trying to convince her that I was right, so here I am in the parking lot.

That seems like a great starting point for our convo. Alongside your own music, you do a lot of working on other people's music as well. Talk to me about how your artistic POV fits into that aspect of the collaborative process.
With every client, it's a totally different dynamic. If I'm doing production, I'm taking someone's ideas and things they've already recorded and, not just mixing them, but adding things—arrangements, melodies, chords, transitions. When I work with No Joy, I send a draft to Jasmine and, 95% of the time, she's in love with it right off the bat and it's like, "No changes, except I want to add some more vocals."

But the client I'm working with now, who happens to be my best friend, has a very specific vision. I spent all day yesterday going hard on one of her songs, she got it, and it was just too too much. She really wants me to strip it back, and it's painful. Not because it's any sort of personal insult, because I'm not affected that way. If she was just like, "I don't like that song," I'd be like, "It's just your opinion." But when you work all day on something, you get really emotionally invested in it. You listen to it 30 times after you're done, and you're like, "This is so fucking sick"—and then you send it to someone and you really miss the mark. That's really hard.

There are other producers that tell you, "It's just par for the course"—which, it is. At the same time, I get so emotionally invested in the creation of music, to the point where everything I went through yesterday, emotionally it's like, "Well, I gotta go back to the drawing board." It's different when you're making something for yourself and, if you're working with other people and they're like, "I don't really like what you did here," it's hard not to be like, "Okay, where did I go wrong? How can I make this different?" It's a tough give-and-take, so to speak.

A good way to avoid stuff like this is to have really good communication up front. When you're working with your best friend, there's tons of communication obviously, but you don't go about things as professionally, because we just talk about it all the time. So we have to start being more organized and make a list of expectations that she's looking for so I can stick to it. The process is totally different for everyone. It really depends on whether somebody wants to work with me because they love Fire-Toolz, versus somebody who wants to work with me because they know that I'd be good at giving them their own sound. With No Joy, it's like, "Just do your Fire-Toolz thing." With Lipsticism, I don't really want a whole lot of me in there.

Let's talk about putting together this new Fire-Toolz record.
Warp scooped me up at a time where I was already in the process of putting together stuff, so I had something almost fully put together. But when I teamed up with them, we made some adjustments—not to the productions, but mostly the tracklist and flow. It's interesting, what happens when you catch someone off-guard, because in a way that's kind of what they did. My next release is built from the ground up in the Warp world.

Lavender Networks, there are songs that I had started years ago. The last song on the album has a "'24" at the end because that was the year I put it together. There were so many versions of it before that, so I put a year on it to differentiate them. Then you have ones that I finished right before I turned everything in. One of them was "Kiss the Bladed Cat." It's almost like a compilation that we built a narrative around. This is technically an EP—smaller budget, smaller everything—to set up a trajectory moving forward to the next one, which will probably be treated as something like more elaborate. It's really just an introduction, in a way.

One sorta-joke I've always heard from people who work at Warp is that it's a great label for people if you're the type of artist who wants to put out one record every 16 years. Thus far in your career, you've kind of done the exact opposite of that. Talk to me a little bit more about getting in the mix with them and what that means for your productivity, aesthetic, and business perspective.
Things are very different when you work with a label like that. I've spent my entire life so far working DIY with smaller labels. Some of the biggest labels that I've ever worked with are still labels run by two people out of their houses. Hausu Mountain, it's just Doug and Max doing the best they can. Orange Milk, it's just Keith and Seth doing the best they can—and they're awesome at it, and you are technically a lot more free to do what you want.

I'm not saying that Warp has any hold on my creativity—I mean that in practical terms. I used to be able to wake up in the morning and be like, "You know what? I'm going to take the day off from work and make a music video." And I'd do that, and then I'd post it the next day and tell everybody about it, and it would be fine. But now we have to plan it out. We have a social team and all this stuff, so things are a lot more calculated. And in a way, that's very limiting, but there's a reason why Warp is what Warp is: Because they're doing a really good job. It's worth it for me to conform to some of that more rigid planning and organization, because they have experience in what works and what doesn't. On Warp, it doesn't help to just willy-nilly post videos and drop singles.

What I'm really hoping for is that I'll still be able to continue to be me as much as I can. while also working with an organization who has their shit together and isn't just being ADHD about what they're going to do. My last EP that I dropped, Private Angel Message, was three songs, and I swear I decided like three days before that to put that out. I think I decided the day of to put the third song on it, which I'd been saving for something else. I can't do that shit anymore. I have to like make a call and plan a meeting and be like, "Okay guys, I have this idea." It's a total mindfuck, but I'm really looking forward to conforming to that different world and seeing what happens—as long as there's no, "Hey, you need to make more hooks, why don't we tone it down for this album?" I'll dip if that's the case.

"And Where Is the Heart? I've Searched My Entire Home" is about the physical act of moving when it comes to living spaces.
Yeah, I have a handful of songs that touch on that subject over the last few albums. I feel things really deeply, and that's why I like to live such a simple life. The reason I work and sit on my front stoop all the time is because everything is so intense, everywhere, all the time. You'll notice, throughout my discography I have a phrase that I use a lot, "Everything and everywhere." I have five songs with that phrase in them, because it feels like everything, everywhere is so loud and intense and bright. It's a sensory thing, so something as simple as moving 40 minutes away is just utterly, devastatingly stressful and emotional.

I get really attached to things that I get used to. I have such a concern for home—being home and having a home—which you can also find throughout my discography. I talk about home a lot. In a lot of those songs, I'm admiring the beauty in the mundane—the way that the lighting looks on the side of a house, the way the grass smells, the sound of motorcycles in the distance, birds. The last song on Lavender Networks, when I say, "Dear Robin," I'm literally talking about this robin that was dancing around in my front yard when I wrote it. So moving 40 minutes away is enough for me to be very wistful and struggle to get used to a new place. This is why breakups are always so hard for me, or losing a pet to old age.

You talked a little bit earlier about your work on the No Joy record, and you bring quite a few collaborators in on this record. Talk to me a little bit about that level of collaboration—meeting people where you're at, and what you get out of it.
I've always absolutely loved meeting people where they're at and then adding what comes natural to me. I've played in a lot of bands, and it's almost just as satisfying to write a riff on guitar, show the band, and have them start jamming on it as it is to hear a riff that the other guitar player wrote and start thinking of my own part that goes with it. I remember, one time I joined a band as the third guitar player, and it was one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life, because I'm already so obsessed with the way that dual guitar work can sound from growing up listening to a lot of post-hardcore, post-punk, and early emo. The way that two guitars would interact with each other is such a big thing for me.

Collaborating with other people is very motivating and stimulating when I can be creative in the way that I can apply the ideas that come up for me. However, when it comes to bringing other people into my work to contribute one thing, it's technically a collaboration by definition. At the same time, I'm building a world, and I see a spot where what would make the most sense and complement that world the most, and I layer in something from this other person. It's almost like collaging in their contribution. They might be writing their own melody, they might even be playing over sections of the song that I didn't even ask them to play on, and then I end up keeping it in. It's still mine. It's still my sculpture. It's just one of the pieces to my sculpture that I happened to pick up.

I mentioned before how you have the opposite problem of, say, a Boards of Canada in terms of your frequency of releasing things. Talk to me a little bit about being prolific. Because, again, you're somebody who, as soon as I feel like I've caught up, I'm hearing new stuff from you almost immediately.
ADHD. That's part of the reason why I'm so prolific—but it's more than that. I think that ADHD really facilitates the unending outward flow of creativity and ideas that's in there. If I was someone who was a lot more deliberate and planned out all my moves more—if I made a list of song ideas before I even opened the DAW, if I sat down with the guitar and wrote the chords first before I even bothered working with the synths on the computer—if I did things like that, I'd never be able to produce as much as I do. What neuro-diversions can help with, in this sense, is that it makes it easier for me to just keep going, get hyper-focused, and hold on to multiple ideas and go back and forth between them.

A lot of producers do things in a very specific order, because if it's chaotic, that'll hold them back. For me, it's always flowing. It's a waterfall. Every time I step away from the computer, a guitar, or an instrument—or even put my phone down—I'm shutting that door, and it's uncomfortable. If I had my way, I'd wake up in the morning, brush my teeth, shave my face because the laser hair removal didn't work, get a latte, and then fucking make music until I realized I haven't eaten all day, and then go eat dinner. Then, if I wasn't tired after dinner, like I always am these days—I'm old—I'd go right back to making music until three in the morning, get four hours of sleep, and do it again. You know what would be awesome about being rich, is that I could do that. It would be cool to have a fuck ton of money so that I could just make music all day.

Last time, we talked a bit about how you're always incorporating heavy music in your work. With this record, I even hear a few metalcore signifiers. We talked about screamo last time having a bit of a revival, and it feels like the same thing has been happening with metalcore recently as well.
In the very late '90s into the 2000s, I really loved metalcore. Norma Jean's Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child is probably one of my all-time favorite metalcore records. But I also really love all the stuff that Norma Jean was ripping off, like Coalesce and Botch. I grew out of metalcore in the late 2000s but when deathcore started getting heavier and more disgusting, more ridiculous—the vocal gymnastics, guitars tuned so low that there's just no pitch anymore, where it's just noise. I fell back in love with heavy music. I probably listen to and identify more with like deathcore and slam these days, because for some reason I haven't really been enjoying modern metalcore when it comes to the direction that it's gone stylistically.

I'm not as much of a fan of the Linkin Park choruses that a lot of heavy bands do. However, I really do love Spiritbox. They can do as many Linkin Park courses as they want. But most of the time, I don't dig it, so that's why I'm way more into like deathcore these days. I just don't want to hear any clean singing, honestly. Humanity's Last Breath will do clean singing, but it sounds like an old wizard or something, so it's fine. But usually it annoys me. I would be best friends with Chester if he were alive, though. I love and appreciate him so much—so much respect for him. When I think about what happened to him, I feel like crying. At the same time, I just do not like his music at all.

At a time where a lot of artists are pulling away from social media, I see you on there getting in the mix more than ever. Let's talk about that.
I really enjoy social media, for the most part. It makes me happy. It's fun. I love to be funny. I love to laugh. I love to connect with people. I love when Twitter starts putting somebody on my feed and I don't know why they keep showing up. But then I start engaging with them over whatever they happen to post, and if we have anything in common we just end up commenting on each other's shit a lot. It's like you have a new friend. You don't know who the fuck it is, but you know their opinions on some stuff, and some music that they like.

There's somebody that keeps showing up chronically. He's really into wrestling— and I hate wrestling—but he keeps putting wrestling shit on my feed, because he keeps commenting on it. There's something about it I enjoy, taking a look into someone's world and seeing stuff that they care about. Then, every once in a while, I'll have a fucking wrestling take because I'll see some video clip they posted of some ridiculous outfit that one of the female wrestlers are wearing, and I'll be like, "Where the hell did she get that? I want one. Then, she has music, and I'll go on YouTube and listen to it, and it's hilarious and bad, and then I end up following that wrestler. It's so fucking beautiful. I just love social media for that.

I'm the same way, honestly. I really like being online still. It's a great way to engage with people. But I understand why people don't like it at at this point as well.
I probably agree with all of those points. I just want to make sure I say the positive stuff, too. Pretty much all the terrible things people say are true. These platforms are intentionally brainwashing us, people are ten times more awful on social media than they are in real life, there's pile-ons and cancellations that should happen and then there's ones that probably shouldn't. It's a mess, but I think I do a pretty good job at trying to control my experience. I don't, like, doomscroll. I don't look at stuff that platforms want to show you, because that's usually when I feel upset. It'll put something in front of me that's so deranged, unhealthy, and terrible—and the comments disturb me. I stay away from stuff like that, for the most part. That's part of the reason why my experience is so positive—because I'm scrolling my feed, and the stuff on my feed is either stuff that's relevant because the algorithm gets a clue, or it's people I know and stuff that I already know I want to see. So it's usually a good time.

Let's talk about making money as an artist.
Well, I wasn't making making any money in the industry back when the industry was a lot different. The only time I ever saw any money come in that went in my pocket was when I pivoted to solo. I know that touring can make people lose money like crazy, but it can also be the way that you make money. The last time I toured, I actually made surprisingly good money. But I know that musicians make less and less off of touring these days, and because streaming brings in so little they have to rely on merch sales if they're touring. It's really complicated and difficult.

I've had to rely on other sources of income, which is what a lot of musicians do. I actually wouldn't mind making more social posts that are its own thing, like a one-minute song that I post to Instagram and it's only ever been there. But that's not how I make money. So I do the mixing, mastering, and occasional production for other people, because it's one of the best ways I can make money doing music without relying on my actual musical projects to make a living. If I was working a day job and making music that doesn't make money, I would still be living in straight-up poverty. But I focus really hard on my business, and that's the only way that I can make all the music I make. I don't play shows very much at all, so there's not really money coming in there.

Yeah, I know you do a lot of mixing and mastering, and I figured that was a financial driver for you in general.
It's also just a skill that a lot of people need to have done for them more and more. It's so much more common for people to learn how to do it themselves, but that makes it so much more common for people to realize that they're not ready yet, and that they need help in some way, where it's paying someone to do it.