Andrew Broder launches 'Broderbeatcast' podcast

Photo by Nick Vlcek

​While it's no secret we are big fans of Andrew Broder here at City Pages we still have a hard time keeping up with the crafty South Minneapolis cat. Since last summer he has played and toured the planet with Oakland's Why?, and also collaborated on a graphic novel with Alan Moore (that, we're still trying to figure out).

More recently, he's back to writing songs and leading his own band, the Cloak Ox, which had a promising debut last month at the Turf Club. Back in the saddle with some of his old Fog cohorts Mark Erickson, Jeremy Ylvisaker, and Martin Dosh, who are on hiatus from working with that other Andrew, Mr. Bird.

The Cloak Ox are hard at work developing Andrew's new songs, giving things more of a rock edge and perhaps a bit less of the intricate arrangements and sporadic nature that represented the evolving sound of Fog; it offers music fans something to look forward to in 2011.

The band had it's initial debut on the radio when they performed the new material on Radio K's "Off the Record."

Live on Radio K: The Cloak Ox - "Artist at the Door" from Radio K on Vimeo.

However that isn't the only project at the moment that Andrew has been working on. Like most Minneapolis music busy-bees who fight the Winter doldrums and lack of sunlight by holing up in the studio, Broder has launched the "Broderbeatcast."

Sort of like a weekly radio program Andrew drops an assemblage of studio works-in-progress to his subscribers and listeners that works as good musical background for whatever it is that occupies your own Winter routines. Filled with loops and samples that are cut and re-worked ad infinitum in his "lab," a typical episode flows naturally from own aural idea to the next providing for plenty of head bobs and musical wall paper.

Not totally unlike his past self-released series of solo drone and noise pieces the beatcast feels like a random exercise utilizing the numerous tools at Andrew's disposal inlcuding turntables, drum machines and keyboards. The final product, apparently the best of these exercises, sound a bit more accessible than one would express from this camp, though still with an experimental flare.

It will be interesting to see where and how these combinations of sounds find their home in Andrew's musical arsenal or if they exist on their own for folks to use and interpolate for their own devices. It seems like anything is possible.

Here's the latest episode of Broderbeatcast:


The Cloak Ox play next with the Blind Shake and Baby Boys on Saturday, Feburary 12 at the Turf Club.

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