Review: Fog

Fog
“Ether Teeth”
(Ninja Tune)

This impressive, conceptual album of experimental music is the work of multi-instrumentalist Andrew Broder. Fog’s music seems to crystallize and coalesce into substantial being out of a dim fog of indistinct sounds as exemplified by the opening “Plum Dumb”. This serves as an album intro of unrelated drones and melodic snippets that nearly buries a male chorus singing words from the chorus to “(He’s) A Jolly Good Fellow”, “which nobody can deny”. From this emerges an indie rocker “What a Day Day” before submerging into the sad ballad “See It? See It?” where the sad singer is wrapped in vinyl static and sibilant voices. A recurring theme on this album is birdcalls culminating in the closing “Cardinal Heart”.