To be released on LP, CD, and digitally on 10/30/20. Artwork by HausMo Max. Orange Vinyl limited to 150 copies. Black vinyl is unlimited. CD packaged in a mini-LP jacket. This is the catalog page with album information and artwork. To view the store page, click here.
Angel Marcloid’s recordings as Nonlocal Forecast focus the trajectory of a vast and diverse catalog squarely in the realm of retro Weather Channel-inspired smooth jazz fusion, intricate prog, and expansive new age experiments. Trading off a measure of the typically overloaded compositional style found in other projects to favor lush atmospheres and relatively pared down instrumental arrangements, Marcloid populates Nonlocal Forecast pieces with progressive keyboard and synth harmonies, complex drum programming, and majestic leads performed on electric guitar, keyboards, and guests’ saxophones. The project runs concurrently alongside the omni-combinatory works of the flagship project Fire-Toolz and a host of other monikers including the vapor-focused works of Mindspring Memories. Holographic Universe(s?)!, the second Nonlocal Forecast full-length and the first to be released on vinyl, follows Bubble Universe! (HAUSMO84, 2019) with a cycle of songs that elevates Marcloid’s grandiose compositional impulses to previously undiscovered heights, while packing the music with dramatic narrative shifts that allow it to journey off into dynamic new directions.
In keeping with the songwriting palette established on Bubble Universe!, Marcloid’s work on Holographic Universe(s?)! centers on labyrinthine MIDI programming of harmonically sophisticated synth arrangements and rapid-fire networks of electronic drums, all tethered to the unpredictable, metrically shifting rhythmic grids laid out as foundations. While the last album presented a clear contrast between the more jazz-inspired, percussive compositions and nebulous tracks focused on new age-inspired drone voices and ambient exploration, Holographic Universe(s?)!avoids drawing a clear dividing line between these two vocabularies. Every piece of Marcloid’s puzzle comes together here within multi-segmented tracks that find room for delicate interludes performed on acoustic guitar, washes of synth drift, and bouts of metal-inspired intensity animated by double kick drum runs and bursts of heavy shredding. Some of the album’s most striking turns arrive with saxophone solos played by guests Bhob Rainey and Ian Smith, and a keyboard solo by Kyle Jameson — as well as a self-referential guest appearance from Angel under the Fire-Toolz moniker. Instead of letting the next big gesture throw off the arc of each composition, Marcloid lays out Nonlocal Forecast tracks with a natural flow, where upheavals in form and structure stand out as landmarks for listeners to survey for a moment in awe before turning their gaze further afield. While allowing many of tracks to stretch to longer runtimes than before, Marcloid also showcases sharpened songwriting in the context of shorter tracks that seem to compress an entire universe (or perhaps more than one?) into individual minutes of non-stop development.
Far from existing as instrumental works devoid of meaning or underlying philosophy, the pieces that Marcloid presents on Holographic Universe(s?)! draw direct inspiration from self-guided studies in quantum theory and physics. The album’s track titles attest to this interest with allusions to the “T.O.E.: Theory of Everything” and the progression of the “We’re Smeared Across a 2D Surface” suite of tracks from “Part 1” back through “Part 0” and “Part -1.” The natural forces of weather patterns and seasonal transitions also feed into Nonlocal Forecast, both in the power they exert in Marcloid’s daily life, and in the specter of the 80s-era Weather Channel and its smooth jazz fusion soundtracks, which serve as one of the most direct influences on the project. The album’s title alludes to the Holographic Principle — the theory that 3D space is a virtual reality that is coded onto a 2D surface. The (s?) parenthetical within the title references the Multiverse Theory, or the idea that infinite universes could exist, and the Many Universe Theory, which imagines that the universe we perceive is just one of many parallel branching universes each created by the collapse of a quantum waveform. The notion of divergent universes ties into the overall arc of Marcloid’s many musical projects, each of which seems to sketch out its own topography with clear rules and limitations to define their discrete compositions. If we see Marcloid’s multifaceted body of work as a cross-sectional view of parallel universes, then Nonlocal Forecast has come to stand as a dense, self-contained biome of cloud formations and overgrown flora, which gives the artist free rein to pursue the most complex instrumental arrangements and harmonically rich tangents of progressive composition. As we stare off into the shining landscape that stretches before us, Marcloid’s holographic hands reach down from somewhere in the clouds to direct us to the portal waiting for our inspection somewhere beyond the next ridge.