Warren Hildebrand, founder of the Toronto (now-Brooklyn based) label Orchid Tapes, will be releasing his highly anticipated Ontario Gothic as Foxes in Fiction on September 23rd. Hildebrand, whose label is behind the distribution of personal fave Alex G, teams up with fellow Canadian Owen Pallett for the album’s lead single “Shadow’s Song.”
The two are a wonderful pairing – Pallett’s duties on violin fill out Hildebrand’s lush and cinematic soundscape, adding a ‘Twin Peaks’-esque tinge of melancholy and tonal tension. There’s an obvious Peter Pan connection to be drawn when personifying shadows, but Hildebrand perfectly captures the existentially taxing relationship (and struggle) between the light and dark parts of one’s soul. Lines like “Your shadow, in time / By chance or design / Fall to the fear you avoid / A place you thought you destroyed” lead us into dark chorals and dissonance, only to break fully into a beautiful outro of expansive violin swells. Maybe for Hildebrand, whose own bouts with depression ceased his output from 2011 to 2012, the internal fight can be more evenly matched.
