Citing witchouse, EDM, and hip-hop as his main influences, foxwedding‘s productions each have a distinct sonic flair of their own. Originally from upstate New York, foxwedding later relocated to Long Beach, California to focus on making music a full time career. Known for his powerful, wavey, and ambient instrumentals, foxwedding is also no stranger to producing for vocalists, including Wicca Phase, Coldhart, Zubin, Fantasy Camp, OmenXIII, Lil Peep, and more.
Despite being a staple producer of the alternative/emo hip-hop scene, as well as a member of Misery Club, little is known about the dynamic producer. We spoke with foxwedding about his upbringings, the music industry, Misery Club, and more.
Photo by YAWNS
Underground Underdogs: I wanted to start with you back in New York. You’re growing up in a small town/rural area with not much to do – what got you into making music?
foxwedding: I think I’ve always been a bit musically inclined. I grew up in a family of musicians, so I started messing with different instruments and stuff pretty early on and got a decent understanding of the basics. Then when I was like 15 the small-town boredom definitely started to kick in. I started playing with Garage Band on my moms work laptop, and pretty much instantly was making beats for my friends to rap over. Not long after that, I leveled up to Ableton and started investing a lot of time into learning it.
In a previous conversation we had, you mentioned that when making more ambient instrumentals, you often used your surrounding scenery as inspiration for what kind of music you’d make. In terms of imagery, did you want listeners to get a sense of what a more quiet life was like? Or do you even have listeners in mind when making instrumentals?
Well, I don’t necessarily imagine a specific listeners experience, but I just try to create music that could elicit an emotional response similar to what I might feel when confronted with the things I find beautiful — like nature, art, history, etc. Having grown up in the woods is just a huge part of me, so I think naturally you can feel some of that in my music.
At this point in your life were you already considering music as something you could do full time? Did you have other plans?
Actually, my day job just closed down a few weeks ago, so it seemed like a good time to see if I can pull this off “career” wise. It can be a pain in the ass, and very inconsistent, but it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do so I’m going to try my best to make it work.
When you realized making music was something you wanted pursue full time, did you have any kind of plan in place after deciding college wasn’t for you?
Yeah, I’d been a decent (at best) illustrator/designer as well, and at the time that seemed a more realistic path to follow. Then like 2 semesters in I had a weird moment where I realized that the passion I had for music went way beyond that shit. I was still totally lost though. I ended up taking music production courses at a community college for a bit in like 2012, and started foxwedding as a project around then. I never planned for it to be more than a personal hobby though, I don’t think I would’ve believed that it could, or that I could progress the way I have as an artist — so I was pretty much just living and creating day by day at that point
Photo by Anthony Tyson
Though you’ve consistently produced tracks for big names in the underground, I’ve always associated you with more ambient and electronic instrumental music. Do you have a preference? Is there a different approach to deciding to make a track for an artist as opposed instrumentals?
I don’t really have a preference any more. I get to express 2 different sides of myself musically, and that’s a dream come true. The focus early on was way more on my solo instrumental stuff, but I think I was also just trying to prove to myself that I could stand on my own as a lone producer. The process is for sure different, though — like for instance from an engineering standpoint if I’m working on a beat for a singer/rapper I’ll leave more headspace open for their vocals to fit into smoothly, rather than creating a full ass sound then trying to just layer even more sound on top of it, if that makes sense.
With the producer and vocalist dynamic in mind, I’ve always felt that the attention and spotlight shifts more towards the vocalists. Do you think that producers get enough songs they’ve produced for other vocalists?
This is tough! Contrary to some of my own bitter ass Twitter rants I actually do believe it is a better time than ever to be a producer as far as recognition. Would it be nice to live in a world where I got the exact same level of love my vocalist homies get? Yeah sure, but I also get more support and love than I could’ve ever imagined, and I’m grateful that the listeners are realizing and appreciating how crucial the producers are in all of this.
I think sometimes as listeners who aren’t involved in the music business, people don’t have a good idea of what producing a beat for a bigger name in the underground means. Often people associate working with a big name with fame and fortune. Is that the case?
[Laughs] Nah, that couldn’t be further from the truth if I’m being honest. It’s not even like a personal matter, or a respect matter, but a fucking insane amount of your favorite underground songs have made a whole lot of money for the vocalist, and zero dollars for the producer. It’s a sadly overlooked truth of an unregulated scene, and the income disparity between “collaborators” can definitely be discouraging, but hopefully it’s something that we’ll see less of in the future as there’s more oversight (and more money flowing).
So with that being said artists have to support themselves regardless of perception which includes selling merchandise and beats. It seems like selling reposts has become somewhat frowned upon if you’re well known in the scene. Do you think there should be a stigma attached to selling reposts for artists trying to make it in music?
Look, if these music streaming platforms were paying us even close to the amount of ad revenue we generate for them you wouldn’t see anyone selling reposts. It’s just a symptom of an unfair industry, and half the people who complain would never spend a dime to support artists anyways. Don’t get me wrong, I have barely ever sold a repost, and I understand that the SoundCloud feed isn’t as trustworthy these days quality wise, but just suck it up and click the next song cause it’s happening whether we like it or not.
Focusing on your own projects – what has the past year been like for you? It seems like you’ve been more focused on collaborating and producing tracks for others, including Misery Club’s tape, Club Misery.
The Misery Club stuff is just so fucking fun to work on! We’re all kind of on a similar wavelength as musicians, and as people so they inspire the hell out of me. I’ve truly never been more confident in something I was a part of, so naturally it’s been a big focus since it started up. Obviously, I’m still always working on all sorts of shit (including a lot of solo shit which I stockpile away) but for the last year, and for the foreseeable future, Misery Club is probably going to be a big part of everything I do.
You recently released “here, at the end of all things” – a wavy instrumental with a lot of dark undertones . Can we expect more instrumental tracks from you?
Yeah, it felt good to put out a single like that and get such good feedback even by people not so familiar with my solo stuff so I’ll definitely be releasing more soon. Like, if you follow me on Instagram you’ll see I’m always posting stories of weird instrumental shit I’m conjuring up. I guess it’s just time to consider if I want to focus all these random tracks into some sort of tape, or album of my own. I don’t know, I guess we’ll see.
Photo by Katherine Durrell
You have crybaby tattooed on your leg, and you produced “Absolute in Doubt” for that tape, which remains a fan favorite for GBC fans to this day. What was your experience like working Lil Peep?
“Absolute in Doubt” was such a beautifully organic process, it felt like it was meant to happen. I had been following Peeps progress for a while and when him and Ned put out “Lil Kennedy” — it blew me away so I was repping it a lot. He was a huge Wicca Phase fan and reached out because he’d heard my production for Secret Boy and wanted to work on something. I sent him like 2 tracks that night and one of them was the “Absolute in Doubt” beat. He was so fuckin’ enthusiastic about it (probably more than it deserved). Someone told me he was just up playing it on repeat that night just getting hyped up. Then he decided to put Wicca onto it, and their crazy chemistry turned what I thought could’ve been a boring beat into a masterpiece. Like I said, it felt like destiny or something, and even way after that Gus always was always beyond grateful, and respectful towards me. This dude lowkey even fought for me and Wicca to get more royalties on the song. He always treated anyone he created with as an equal, and that’s a very rare trait in this little world.
Speaking of GBC, you’ve produced extensively for Wicca Phase Springs Eternal. What is your relationship like with WPSE?
I’m so grateful for WPSE. This is a guy who as a vocalist will challenge every standard, or rule that a genre maintains, and make it sound beautiful while he does it (in the same ways I always knew I wanted to challenge the standards as a producer). Neither of us are huge talkers, so our friendship is often just sending links and files to each other then fanboying over what the other created, but that’s all it needs to be. There’s an underlying musical connection and respect that we have and I’m sure it’ll continue to develop as we create more cool shit.
Thank you for taking the time to answer questions about your life and your work as producer. Do you have any shoutouts or comments you’d like to conclude the interview with?
Well thank y’all for giving enough of a fuck to interview me I appreciate that for sure..
Of course shouts out to my family, my friends, my supporters, and specifically want to express some gratitude for Nedarb who’s been a huge advocate and homie for me in a lot of ways this year.
Other than that just keep an eye out for the new Misery Club EP coming in the very near future, I think it’ll be even better than the first.