by Jenn Kelly
For the past ten years Foxes in Fiction has been birthing introspective requiems. The latest musical offering pairs trauma and expressive dream pop. The new album is a study in contrasting pain and tenderness while facing the inexplicable human inclination toward self-destruction and how one moves forward from there.
Warren Hildebrand is Foxes in Fiction; a musician/producer from Toronto who now finds themselves living and working out of New York City. Trillium Killer is their third album, released October 18th by Orchid Tapes (Coma Cinema, Alex G). It is worth noting that Hildebrand is also the curator and creator of Orchid Tapes, a small but fierce record label. The label’s mantra appears to be ‘creating art for the sake of art, industry norms be damned’. Orchid Tapes states on its website that it seeks “music and artwork that breaks free of the established norm, disregards trends, reflects the dedication of its creator and provokes a strong emotional resonance within whoever experiences it.”
The full-length album boasts ten tracks birthed in the time and space between 2017 and 2019. Hildebrand is able to set the musical landscape with delicate, wistful vibes generating otherworldly collages. The track “Rush to Spark” tackles the subject material of mental health and the medication of aforementioned illness and how these two things effect the world and people around us. “Antibody” is another track with treated vocals tackling the fear of HIV as a queer person and how the use of preventative medication helped quell these legitimate qualms.
Trillium Killer is an ambitious work reaching for greatness, set against the melodic backdrop of symphonic strings, automated bass and drum machines. The album is eccentric and weird. We have been presented with a piece of work that is easy to listen to with subject matter that can be hard to digest. Hildebrand guts themselves for their art and it shows. The result is raw, real and not easily forgotten.
