Fog inundates Bloomington

It's a modern phenomenon in America to want to categorize everything. All things must have their own specific niche, whether it is for marketing purposes or just for our own state of mind. Those things that go against traditions or blend trends beyond easy recognition must be forced to go it alone.\nIn a sense though, this is how American styles have been created in music. Extensive borrowing combine with the novel appeal of exotic sounds to break open new genres. This is precisely what has kept rock 'n' roll, a seemingly dead-end art form, alive for nearly fifty years now. \n"I just think it will take a while for the gospel to spread," says Andrew Broder, aka Fog, of his debut album Fog. "It is a very difficult album to categorize and this makes the big music monster machine twitch and buzz and clunk and it doesn't like albums like that very much. So it it'll be an uphill battle, but that's why I'm here."\nFog is the pet project of Broder. It can be seen as a compilation soundtrack to the places his life has taken him to so far. \nBroder was born and raised in Minnesota, where he remains today. He is one of the many talented artists that have chosen to work out of Minneapolis. He learned to play a myriad of instruments essential to rock bands as a kid (guitar, piano, bass, drums, etc.) and at the age of 15, began dee-jaying and doing graffiti art. He attended the University of Minnesota for two years, and hated every second of it. \nIt's a common middle-class dilemma Broder had found himself in -- a sort of existentialist anxiety about his place in the world and a struggle for self-definition. Like so many before him and so many since, he dropped out of college and got sick. \nBroder says about this period, "I was tired of squelching my ideas to fit the hip-hop mold. Tired of scratching atop the din of plinking martini glasses at trendy bars. Sick, frail and direction-less. That is when everything changed."\nIn 1998, he started recording the songs that would eventually make up the eponymous debut album, Fog. "It was made over the course of a year and a half, and then re-mixed for Ninja [Tune Records] release a year later," says Broder. "It was done on a four track in 2 houses I lived in and in a studio owned by Jeremy Ylvisaker, who plays guitar in the Fog band."\nJust reading the titles of the tracks, one can begin to see the melodrama that unfolds on the record. Titles like, "The Smell of Failure," "Pneumonia," "Fuckedupfuckfuckup," "Hitting a Wall" and "We're a Mess," create an ominous mood. But, the scene is all about perspective. On "Pneumonia," Broder sings, "is it depression or disease," and lyrically, the album doesn't move far from there. The music on that song in particular though is a swinging rock groove mixed with carefree turntable scratches and thus is the struggle. Sometimes, some songs on Fog never coalesce because everything sounds at odds with each other. Perhaps it's because Broder isn't taking himself and his problems too seriously. \n"Music for me is a really hopeful thing even if I am singing about sad stuff," Broder says. "I like that juxtaposition. And yeah, I find that I am never totally ecstatic or totally hopeless. Always somewhere right in the middle, trying to remain empty headed as the Tao says."\nThe album shows the wide range of Broder's musical influences. The punk rock and hip-hop stain is evident, though he says, "both have, at one point or another in my life, been heavy influences on me musically. These days, not really." \nWhat a listener will find on this album is a more contemporary and sophisticated approach to the aforementioned music. Fog sounds like a cross between DJ Shadow's gift for the ambient tone poem and Thom Yorke's desperate crooning. \nThe album also has a certain lo-fi charm to it, so when Broder sings about millipedes and silverfish, you get the feeling he is down there with them. "Heh heh.. yeah, it's quaint shit," says Broder. "The sound of the record is the sound of finding your voice, so I think that it works. I will probably record the next thing kinda different so we'll see what happens."\nBroder has recently begun to tour around North America in support of his first record. "I have three wonderful musicians that play with me," Broder says. "I play turntables, guitar, Wurlitzer and sing. Mark Erickson plays bass and keyboards and sings. Jeremy Ylvisaker plays guitar and keyboards and sings. Martin Dosh plays drums and keyboards and sings." \nFog will come to Bloomington on Saturday, July 20. Jonathan Yuma, who is putting on the show, says, "No one ever brings anything to town that is a little different, electronic or otherwise, so Fog, I thought, would be that something different that Bloomington needs. I'm taking a chance, but even if it doesn't work, at least I'm taking chances and bringing something different here."\nRight now, they are coming out of a thriving music scene in Minneapolis. Another local musician Darren Jackson a.k.a. Kid Dakota, who has worked with Broder says, "Fog is one of the bigger acts in town as far as indie rock goes. The album is also doing quite well. It got a lot of well deserved press." \n"I think Andrew has a brilliant future ahead of him," says Jackson. "He's very passionate about what he does and works very hard." \nIf there is one thing that Broder has shown so far is that he is an uncompromising character. A recent press clipping compared him to Neil Young, and that seems to hold some water. His first album sounds like your reading a diary, where daily banalities and undecipherable inside information come out as a universal code.