(2020) Nonlocal Forecast - Holographic Universe(s)!


Review:
Angel Marcloid is a restless experimenter and collagist whose work as Fire-Toolz mashes a wide-range of electronic and acoustic elements into a thrilling often alienated mélange. Under her guise she conjures her fascination with Yacht Rock, jazz fusion and Kankyō Ongaku, the Japanese environmental music of the 1980s, into a mix that treads a razor thin line between homage and parody with utter seriousness to form new fractal shapes that distort and repurpose tropes even while celebrating them. COVID lockdown appears to have triggered both a questions about what “normal life” means and a wave of musical nostalgia across the world as people seek comfort and consolation in the familiar. Although recorded during 2019 Holographic Universe(s?)! interrogates and celebrates the yearning for simpler times when fans, united by their favorite radio stations as much as their favorite bands, were happy to share common information sources and pursue niche interests. Marcloid adroitly but gently subverts the genres she so clearly loves and brings out the blitheness, empty technical sophistication and inherent oddity of much of this music. Marcloid builds these universes with computer, midi controller and guitar. The programmed drums are immediately familiar, the keyboards likewise and her guitar solos are memory triggers for cadences that were, whether loved or hated, seemingly ubiquitous. Echoes of Michael Brecker decorate “Interactions Between Brains & The Foam of Potentiality” on which Bhob Rainey garnishes a tricksy prog ballad with a lyrical solo straight from the 1985 AOR charts and “Space-Time = Infinity-Eternity Objectified” with Ian Smith’s saxophone beaming in from the lost world of 8-tracks and topiary   ‘tashes, smoothing its way through a satin cloud of billowing synths and beanbag drums. “The Bubbling Up Of Duality On An Autumn Night By A Forest Stream” is as comforting and disquieting as the title suggests, gentle acoustic guitar over building keyboards, is that a lamb bleating lost and lonely in the distance? gated drums set the stage for the big electric solo that shakes its decadent fist as the world turns, indifferent. Marcloid mines memory to engage experience and dig into duality. Whether balm or diversion, music remains Pavlovian, beyond articulation if not reproach. Holographic Universe(s?)!  dissects the gap between what we know in the here and now and what we may have dreamt of becoming, enjoy it in two dimensions as an entertainment and a third as inner space exploration. Either way it is a transporting 42 minutes.





Tracklist:
01 - First Concrete Realization
02 - The Missing Link Is Extremely Nonlocal, Extremely Scrambled
03 - Imprinted, Encoded, Shone (Emergence)
04 - Interactions Between Brains & the Foam of Potentiality
05 - Extended to Disparate Fields
06 - The Bubbling Up of Duality On an Autumn Night By a Forest Stream
07 - We're Smeared Across a 2D Surface (Part 1)
08 - My Big T.O.E
09 - We're Smeared Across a 2D Surface (Part 0)
10 - We're Smeared Across a 2D Surface (Part -1)
11 - Space-Time = Infinity-Eternity Objectified
12 - My Incomplete T.O.E


Media Report:
Genre: ambient, jazz
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits