Still Corners
During the course of their career, the British-American duo Still Corners’ sound proved to be anything but static. Greg Hughes and Tessa Murray’s earliest music, such as their 2011 debut album Creatures of an Hour, borrowed from the spacy experiments of ’60s psych legends the United States of America. From there, they dabbled in the glamorous ’80s synth pop of 2013’s Strange Pleasures and moved even further afield on 2018’s sultry, twangy Slow Air. Despite their changes from album to album, a commitment to dreamy atmospheres — and Murray’s delicate vocals — united their music. Still Corners formed shortly after Hughes, an American expatriate, met Murray by chance at a London train stop. Eventually, Still Corners became a quartet with the addition of members Leon Dufficy and Luke Jarvis, and released singles and EPs including 2008’s Remember Pepper? and 2010’s Don’t Fall in Love. In 2011, they signed to Sub Pop, which released their full-length debut, Creatures of an Hour, that year; the album drew comparisons to Broadcast, Stereolab and the Paisley Underground scene. By the time of their second record, 2013’s Strange Pleasures, Still Corners were down to the duo of Hughes and Murray, and had ditched the ’60s influences in favor of a slicker, more ’80s-inspired sound. To record their third album, Murray and Hughes moved from London to the English seaside; inspired by the water’s intense color, they named the set of songs Dead Blue. The album, which featured the Brian Wilson-inspired single “Lost Boys,” was released on Still Corners’ own Wrecking Light Records in September 2016. For 2018’s Slow Air, the duo relocated to Austin, Texas’ hill country, channeling the region’s heat and evocative landscapes into a dreamy set of songs that they recorded in three months. ~ Gregory Heaney, Rovi
Foxes in Fiction
The solo project of Toronto musician and Orchid Tapes founder Warren Hildebrand, Foxes in Fiction was born as an an outlet for their dreamy sound collages and grew into a far more musical vision of ambient pop. Along with frequent limited-release cassettes and free songs posted online, Foxes in Fiction’s sound grew richer and more refined on releases like 2014’s Ontario Gothic. Toronto-born musician Hildebrand formed Foxes in Fiction in 2005 during their second year in high school. The project initially showcased their trippy sound collages and ambient soundscapes. Early recordings like 2010 debut full-length Swung from the Branches tended more toward this style. In the earliest days of the project, Hildebrand recorded and released new music prolifically, churning out EPs, cassette releases, 7″ singles, and a wealth of songs fans could download for free. Foxes in Fiction developed at the same time Hildebrand’s label Orchid Tapes was becoming a home for trend-setting artists like Elvis Depressedly, Ricky Eat Acid, and Alex G. The second Foxes in Fiction album, Ontario Gothic, arrived in 2014. More song-oriented than some of their earlier ambient collage material, the seven-track album drew on themes of loss and musically veered toward lo-fi production and intimate shoegaze textures. By this time, Hildebrand had relocated from Toronto to New York, and that transition, along with the self-destructive impulses it wrought, provided the inspiration for third album Trillium Killer. The release was recorded between 2017 and 2019 in Hildebrand’s home studio and proved their most versatile and shifting effort yet, incorporating elements of glowing dream pop, ambient atmospheres, loungey pop, and vocal manipulations representing different characters within the tiny universe the songs created. Trillium Killer was released in October of 2019 on Orchid Tapes.