Oxford based Mr Fogg has just unveiled "Sprint", a previously unheard track from his forthcoming second album 'Eleven' which is out 4th June on Kicking In Recordings.
The video features footage from Mr Fogg's recent trip to Iceland, where he recorded the album with legendary producer Valgeir Sigurdsson (Bjork - Medulla, Feist - Metals, Damon Albarn - Dr Dee).
Mr Fogg - Sprint video:
As he sat down to write the songs that would make-up his sophomore album, self-managed and signed to his own record label, Mr Fogg was starting to wonder whether life as a solo artist wasn't a bit, well, lonely.
"Making music has always felt like a slightly perverse thing to do. None of my friends were ever musicians. None of my family were musicians. I was never part of a scene. I was just up in my room making music on my own."
Then somebody pointed out to him that his grandfather, born in 1896, had been an opera singer, performing at the Royal Opera House and that his great-grandparents had been a double-act in the 19th century musical halls.
"People had probably been telling me since I was a child, but I had never paid attention or made any connection with what I do. Suddenly it clicked for me that I was part of a musical tradition going back 150 years. The idea that I should be a musician started to make some sense."
Fogg set about his task with renewed energy and a change in approach. Where debut album 'Moving Parts' was largely written in the computer, the new songs were built from a series of sketches, field recordings and improvisations stored in mobile phones and notebooks and later reconstructed in his Oxford studio.
The resulting album, Eleven, was completed during three trips to Iceland in the latter half of 2011 in collaboration with producer Valgeir Sigurdsson.
It is a beguiling mix of the electronic and the organic, setting piano, harmonium, brass and strings against precise, intricate and occasionally brutal electronics. At centre stage is Fogg's distinctive voice, at turns melancholy and optimistic, threatening and sympathetic.
Lyrically, it is inextricably linked with the year that gave the album its name: "As I neared the end of the record it occurred to me that these songs were so directly influenced by the events of last year that it couldn't have been written at any other time. So much that was important happened in 2011 that it somehow felt to me like a dividing line between the world as it was in the last decade and where we are now."
Above all, though, Eleven is a record that puts the song first, with the intricate arrangements serving as a backdrop to a series of addictive melodies. It's an approach very much in evidence on the piano and multi-layered harmonies of first single Stay Out Of The Sun (Zane Lowe 'Next Hype') and the spiralling choral samples and soaring vocals of follow-up A Little Letting Go, which premiered on NME.com on April 2nd.
Eleven is released on Kicking Ink Recordings/Kompakt on June 4th 2012.
"Genius" - NME
"Sharp, accessible electro-pop" - Q Magazine
"Laces refined pop with modernist electronic tics" - The Guardian
Mr Fogg Official Website
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