It’s not as often as you used to, but sometimes you’ll still hear that talent is a shadowy attribute, an illusion of greatness that’s actually just comprised of time, effort, and routine that anyone could aspire to given the right set of circumstances. In the age of digital marketing campaigns (you know the one, bird fans) we can see why said school of thought persists, but for the most part we consider this an overly cynical take – we know a true outlier when we see one.
Take Fire-Toolz, for instance. Any argument against the mountain of talent in her body of work would surely evaporate in seconds, the latest proof being Lavender Networks, her latest in a series of absolute juggernaut records but somehow her first with Warp Records.
For the uninitiated, it’s best you just jump in and get used to it. You could start here, or you could start where we did with 2021’s Eternal Home, it hardly matters and will likely take a few tries. It’s worth it though, especially once you understand that when we say Fire-Toolz sounds like all your favorite records playing at once, we mean it as the highest compliment.
Despite the over-stimulus, Lavender Networks just might be the record that grabs the most people by surprise, though it doesn’t accomplish this by changing anything drastically. It just feels like it’s coming from somewhere even more intentional than before, potentially even more personal as well. Obviously we’re not going to sit here and tell you we understood every word or related to this or that, like any of her records it’s going to take months to sink in. Still, for better or worse, to us Lavender Networks marks first time the end of a Fire-Toolz album, the conclusion left no notes.
Normally at the end her records were completely obsessed, starting it over, telling everyone, posting about it, putting it in the articles… but we just needed some silence after this one. Even for longtime fans, there’s a lot that’s notable: it’s got some of Angel Marcloid’s best production yet, seeing the harsh vocals tear through space with confidence while letting everything around them expand. It’s got incredible features from Zola Jesus, Lipsticism, and more. It’s on Warp Records, which is truly an amazing place to see Fire-Toolz in 2026, even if we think that deal should have happened ages ago.
It’s crazy that with such an expansive discography, Fire-Toolz can still surprise us, but if you’re able to zoom out a little, Lavender Networks signals progress in the most important ways. While her range and chaotic changeups have always felt grounded, it felt like a sense of removal or even dissociation was part of the appeal. Now that we think about it maybe that says more about our own mental health but what we’re trying to say is that now it feels like Fire-Toolz has more control, as opposed to just being willing and able to share the ideas as they come in collage format.
If you needed to hear just one track to get an idea, one of our favorites is “Balam =^..^= Says IPv09082024 Strawberry Head,” which almost sounds like something Alexander Brandon would have written before melting into DnB and cybernetic blackened prog. Yeah, we know even that sentence was a lot. But like Tommy Lee Jones says to Will Smith in Men in Black: “it’s worth it… if you’re strong enough.”
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