The Fog Lifts

Minneapolis band Fog started in 1999 as a one-man project. Andrew Broder did the instrumentation, mixing, and overdubbing for almost the entire first album, Fog. After releasing the album on his Dinkytown Records label, Broder recruited several friends to re-create the songs for live performances. “With each record, more and more people have contributed,” he says. “Only in the last year or two, though, has the band really reflected the feeling of the recordings, and vice versa.”

Currently Fog is a trio—Broder on guitar and vocals, Tim Glenn on drums, and Mark Erickson on bass guitar. It’s a safe bet this core is why the band’s newest release, Ditherer, is more cohesive than its previous albums. With each record, Fog has moved further away from turntables, overdubs, and layered production and moved toward instrument- and vocal-driven music. When Fog was heavy into turntables and Broder did most of the instrumentation, he says, “the songs were more like piles of sounds, shaped into something. These are songs being played by people. There are no turntables on this record, which for Fog is a first. We have no plans to return to that anytime soon.” The once experimental electronica/hip-hop/punk/rock outfit is now becoming more definable as a rock band.

Guest musicians often record and perform with Fog, and they did for Ditherer too. Former Fog members Jeremy Ylvisaker, Martin Dosh, and Michael Lewis all appear on the album, as do Phil Elverum, Andrew Bird, Why?, and Low. Pedestrian, a rapper from Oakland, California, collaborated with Broder on many of the lyrics. “It was time to expand the sound, get some different voices, different textures,” says Broder. “I wanted this record to be less insular, to get out of my head a little bit.” Available August 14.

Megan Wiley is the online editor of mspmag.com.