Trillium Killer' is the third album by Foxes in Fiction, aka Warren Hildebrand, the Toronto-born musician and producer living in New York City who also founded the celebrated homespun record label Orchid Tapes, responsible for notable early-career releases from (Sandy) Alex G and Soccer Mommy. Recorded between 2017 and 2019 in Hidebrand's home recording studio, 'Trillium Killer' represents a clear and marked step forward in Foxes in Fiction's sound, song-writing technique and conceptual scope.
The Comsat Angels were an English post-punk band from Sheffield, England, initially active from 1978 to 1995. Their music has been described as "abstract pop songs with sparse instrumentation, many of which were bleak and filled with some form of heartache". They have been credited as being an influence on later post-punk revival bands such as Blacklist, Bell Hollow, Editors and Interpol. The Comsat Angels toured heavily in the UK and western Europe, especially in the Netherlands; the band's two concerts in August 1982 in Iceland had a strong influence on the music scene in Reykjavík. They also toured the United States twice. Their music has been extensively reissued and recompiled since 1995 by various record labels.
Combining Hassel's trademark brand of Fourth World fusion with influences from the then emerging hip-hop scene, this 1990 album is a landmark release in JH's career. This 2014 re-release of City: Works Of Fiction is presented as a deluxe triple CD set, alongside a 1989 concert performance of the City group, mixed live by Brian Eno, plus a carefully edited sequence of alternate takes, demos and re-interpretations.
Intricacy, musicality, craftsmanship, and nuance are words that, back in 1989, were hardly ever used to describe death metal - a style so extreme, so ferocious, so intent on annoying parents at any cost that it seemed destined to self-destruct. But Dark Tranquillity and their expansive colleagues in Gothenburg, Sweden, refused to believe that death metal could not be musical, nuanced, and melodic, and that outlook continues to define them on Fiction. This rewarding CD was recorded in 2006 and released in 2007, the year that marked Dark Tranquillity's 18th anniversary. Perhaps 18 years isn't all that long compared to the Rolling Stones celebrating their 45th anniversary in 2007; nonetheless, 18 is an impressive number when one recalls all the naysayers who, in the late '80s, thought death metal would be long gone by the 21st century…