Orchid Tapes has developed a reputation as the record label for ambient-laced bedroom pop acts (see some of their artists we’ve covered in the past). The blurb on their website describes how they are “two friends with an shared interest in the creation and curation of music and artwork that breaks free of the established norm, disregards trends, reflects the dedication of it’s creator and provokes a strong emotional resonance within whoever experiences it.” Foxes in Fiction is Warren Hildebrand, one half of the Orchid Tapes founding team (alongside Brian Vu). It’s perhaps unsurprising then that his music ticks the same boxes as the OT mission statement above.
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Borne out of tragic loss, both of Hildebrand’s younger brother and also a dear friend of his in the aftermath, Ontario Gothic is a very personal, intimate record. But it is not intimate in the traditional sense of explicit heart-on-sleeve lyrics and sparse instrumentation. These are essentially pop songs, in which the listener finds strange, dream-like versions of themselves amongst the layers of ambience. The songs are like a thick layer of smoky fog that drifts and swirls on the currents of Hildebrand’s grief and isolation. Owen Pallett’s strings help create a soothing, spectral sound that has a certain viscosity, conveying the feeling that if you gave it your complete trust and leaned back it would support your weight.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/157001778″]
From start to finish the album takes a blend of nostalgia and grief and spins it into something not only beautiful but genuinely comforting. The result is akin to being totally alone in an old dark cathedral that smells of damp and dust and old incense but has the most vivid stained-glass windows and it’s very early in the morning and the sun is just that moment rising to send it’s gentle rays through them.
You can get the album on a pay-what-you-can basis via Bandcamp
Orchid Tapes did release an LP, but that’s already sold out. If you really want it then pester them and perhaps they’ll do another pressing.