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Artist Interviews
Q&A: Mr Fogg
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 14 April 2010
Alternative pop musician Mr Fogg self-released his debut single ‘Giving In’ in 2005, gaining airplay from Radio 1, 6music and Xfm. He then ran away to Scandinavia, where he was picked up by Icelandic label Kimi Records, who stuck him in a studio to record his debut album ‘Moving Parts’ with Björk producer Valgeir Sigurðsson. Always experimenting with unusual methods for getting his music out there, Fogg used Bandstocks to raise money for a UK release of that album and in December 2009 opened a pop-up shop in central London for four days to perform and sell his music. With his ‘Moving Parts’ single out this week and the album out on 19 Apr, we caught up with Mr Fogg to ask the Same Six.
Q1 How did you start out making music?
I wrote my first song when I was seven or eight years old. I started out playing the electric organ and then the piano, but I was always more interested in creating my own melodies than learning to play other people’s. Then, when I was about twelve, I discovered the four-track tape recorder and started to experiment with layering guitars, keyboards, bass and drum machine and making complete recordings.
Q2 What inspired your latest album?
Very early on I had an idea that I wanted to make an album that could be listened to all the way through. But to start with the possibility of making an album at all was very far off, so I was writing as many songs as I could with no clear idea of where they fitted in. Then, when I decided that it was time to focus on making the album, I started to sketch a structure in my head of where certain songs might fit in and I realised there were gaps. So I set about writing songs to fill those gaps. For example, I didn’t have a song that could end the record, so I wrote ‘Answerphone’ specifically to be the last track on the album.
Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
I tend to spend a lot of time improvising until I start coming up with things that I like – I usually get obsessed with a particular chord change, or second or two of melody, and then build out from that. Then it’s an editing process of condensing and re-ordering a whole series of those moments into a song. The very last thing I write is the lyric and vocal melody – I’m constantly singing ideas to myself, but I never commit to anything until the very last minute.
Q4 Which artists influence your work?
The artists I reach for time and time again are Radiohead and Björk, but in terms of an influence on my work, I’m constantly listening to and analysing everything I hear and taking influences – even from music I don’t like!
Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
I think nowadays we almost have too much information about music we haven’t heard yet, and as a result we’re subconsciously making decisions about whether we like things we’ve never listened to. So, I would say to somebody who was about to listen to my album for the first time, don’t read anything about it, don’t ask anybody else what they think of it, just set aside a time when you are doing nothing else and focus on the music for 40 minutes – give it the same attention you would a film in the cinema.
Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest album, and for the future?
When I am writing music, occasionally I come across a combination of notes that sends a shiver down my spine. I’m constantly chasing those moments and trying to pin them down. My songs are basically a collection of bits of music that have had that effect on me, and my job is to try to convey that same feeling to the listener. So my ambition is to try to create music that has the same physical effect on other people that it does on me.
MORE>> www.mrfogg.co.uk
