INTERVIEW: Mt Fog

Seattle’s Mt Fog, who is entirely Carolyn B., writes music that exists in its own environment. On her first album, 2021’s Guide to the Unusual, wandering electronics met a voice able to flatten and stretch itself skyward, providing a dense ecosystem easy to lose yourself in. Her songs are borne of the kind of imagination you can feel cruelly slipping away from your grasp as you age, as vivid daydreams of towering trees and magical foregrounds start to feel more pointless than captivating.

On the strength of a new single, it seems those foregrounds have only grown more vivid. The song is an apt glimpse into her upcoming follow-up LP, which adds stronger production, wider dynamics and virtuosic violin to her aural dioramas. From what I’ve heard of the record, it promises to be strong evidence of how Mt Fog has grown as an artist.

On a warm day just before the summer solstice, I took the time to chat with Carolyn about their art. Given the mysticism embedded in the music, I thought it might be fun to structure our chat in the context three randomly-pulled tarot cards, each allocated to a period of time.

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Past
THE MOON
Unconscious | Illusions | Intuition.

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When did you start wanting to make music?

That’s a twofold answer. I grew up playing the violin. My whole childhood was music.

When did you start playing the violin?

Kindergarten. I have two older sisters who both also do music and they started when they were young. So I had a musical household, and from the start of my life I’ve always been singing too. I used to make up musicals about my classmates, nothing that I would write down.

I did a lot of productions as a child, but really just classical music. I didn’t start making my own music under Mt Fog, or anything even in the realm of Mt Fog, until 2011 when I started messing around with Reason. I had a pirated version; I wouldn’t have spend the money on that. I had a really old keyboard that my sister had left in her old apartment and I would just mess around making little loops.

For years I did that, but it wasn’t until 2019 that I had more time because I had switched careers completely. I was working as a paid intern in Olympia and I had a lot of free time on my hands and I was living in a house without the internet. I didn’t really have any friends and I just had all this time, so I decided to write songs, and that’s when I was like, “I’m gonna put a name to this.”

I feel like I’ve making songs my whole life, but this is the first time where it’s been structured, with the intent of having something to share.

Do you still play violin?

Yeah, I do. I think eight out of the ten songs on the new album have violin. This new album featured violins pretty significantly on some songs. I recently got my violin tuned up. It was a very emotional experience. I have a lot of…feelings about violin. It’s a very loaded instrument for me.

Emotionally?

I went to a boarding school for the arts and I played violin eight hours a day for three years. This was sophomore, junior and senior year of high school. I was applying to conservatories, and then I just kind of got to the point where I was doing it so much in such a conscripted way that…I was miserable. I hated performing, whereas I love performing now.

It’s doing music on someone else’s terms versus doing music on your own terms, or engaging with music on your own terms. I couldn’t play violin for 10 years before I could even get it out of its case again. I just stopped completely.

You’ve mentioned that you’ve also sung Balkan music before. Tell me about that.

I basically got into college because of violin, but then I quickly realized that I was not really music major material. [Laughs.] I got so nervous on the music theory exam; a sound would be like ringing in my ears and they would be major thirds and they would be like, “Identify the interval.” And I was like, “I can’t!” I had so much anxiety tied up with music and classical music.

So my first year of college, I was in the orchestra and I hated orchestra. I didn’t like the orchestra kids. It was not my scene, so I quit after three weeks. And then in my sophomore year I thought, “I need to do something with music.” So I auditioned for all of the weird acapella groups at my college, not knowing anything about any of them. I just went out and sang. I think I sang “Summertime” as my audition. I was like, “I’m not a singer! I don’t know songs, that’s a song!”

I got accepted into this group. I’d never seen them perform before, but it was this Slavic chorus. At the first rehearsal they got up the sheet music and I looked at it – at that point I was like a pretty good sight reader – and I was singing according to the music and the other people were like, “What are you doing? You need to listen to us! The music has nothing to do with what we actually do.” It was a complete culture shock.

I ended up being in that group for three years and getting really into it. We sang mostly Bulgarian women’s music, traditional women’s music, which is very beautiful. Super emotional, very different from classical music. I kind of learned how to sing through that. I hadn’t really used my voice, too much, but I learned a lot about different singing techniques being in that group. They use a lot of glottal stops and chest voice, a bunch of different techniques that are really fun. My singing now is definitely very influenced by that.

It’s just completely orthogonal to the classical music I’ve been doing, which was like, “If you don’t play this note in this way, you’re a failure.”

I do really appreciate classical music: it was a cool exposure to have, just to have played so much of the repertoire. I’ve heard so much. When you say “classical” music, it’s not just  classical theory. It’s hundreds of years of wildly different styles from – well, maybe not from around the world, but…

The Western world.

The Western world, at least.

Tell me about your biggest influences.

I think in terms of style, initially I always say The Knife and Björk. Whether you hear that is a different question. I also used to say that, if I had a band, I’d want it to sound like early Talking Heads. Like, 1970s Talking Heads.

But I also don’t feel like Ive ever set out to sound like anything in particular. This past year I’ve definitely gotten more into Kate Bush.

Good time for it.

Yeah, good time for it recently. I would say Cocteau Twins is another pretty big influence. And when I first started making music, I was really into like Crystal Castles.

That question is tough because what you’re inspired by is not necessarily what your music sounds like. I like music and I like art in general, and whatever the medium is where the artist creates their own universe, that’s kind of the music I tend to enjoy. Especially things that have like fantastical elements or feel like they’re in a parallel plane that’s both familiar and not familiar. I think The Knife is definitely like that, which is part of why I like The Kknife so much. Silent Shout is the record of theirs I’ve definitely listened the most to. I feel like Cocteau Twins also create their own universes. Every album is slightly different.

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Present
FOUR OF SWORDS
Rest | Restoration | Contemplation

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Tell me about your first record, Guide to the Unusual. The pandemic was happening. Was that partof the impetus in deciding that you wanted to put together a record?

It started when I was living in Olympia. Some of the songs that ended up on the album I wrote during that time.

I also had a super secret album that’s no longer on the internet called Giants Built This Blade that I put out in 2019 under Mt Fog. I don’t even remember how many tracks it was, but it was on my Bandcamp and it was very rough. I think it had a lot of energy, and people bought it, but it’s no longer public. The title is a phrase I got from Beowulf. I was reading Tolkien; I’m not a huge Tolkien fan, but it’s a really cool translation.

So I started putting things together in 2019 and I performed at a lot of open mics. I was at three open mics a week.

I did a three-track EP in September 2020. I was working on all of Guide to the Unusual at that time too, still writing songs. And then I decided in early 2020 ones that I was gonna make this a full-on record and commission artwork and conceptualize it from start to finish. So it did come together during the pandemic, but little pieces of it were from before. I was going on a lot of frustrated walks in the rain, and I came up with a lot of the material just walking around. A lot of the tracks are very similar BPM, they’re kind of walking BPMs.

In early 2021 I decided I was gonna finish this and put effort into getting people to listen to it. I hadn’t really done that before. It’s hard, but it also challenges you to take your art to the next level, so I have been inspired by that. It’s not all work, it’s fun. And when you share your music with people, you also get feedback that you would never have thought about. When you’re a solo artist, it’s just you, and I think everything I do is great. So hearing other people say, “I really connected with this,” or “This works really well,” or “This doesn’t,” it helps.

I completely produced it myself and recorded everything in my bedroom during the pandemic, I live in an apartment building, so some of my neighbors didn’t feel so positive about my album. I was just recording vocals over and over again. That was part of the impetus to record vocals for this new album in the studio; there’s a variety of reasons I chose to go that route. One of them is to not have to try to get the perfect take at home, which is very hard when you’re already so self-conscious of being loud.

Just from what I’ve heard, the new material immediately feels poppier and more propulsive than anything else you’ve put out. Is that gonna be indicative of what we’re gonna see coming forward?

Yes. Some of the songs are more trip-hop. The drums, the percussion that I’m doing on this album is completely different. It’s not just a straight-up drum machine. It’s not live drums, but it’s a little more propulsive and poppy. I would say half the songs are pretty fu and upbeat, and then half the songs are a little more downtempo, trip-hoppy. 

Is it finished yet?

Yeah. I recorded all the vocals for all of the songs, I produced the whole album, and now I’m just mixing. I’m trying not to be too perfectionist. I really enjoyed getting to be better at mixing. A lot of people are like, “I would never mix my own album!,” but with this style of music the line between mixing and production is blurry, so I’m just mixing it myself.

I haven’t settled on a release date, but it’ll probably be October, which makes sense. It’s a haunted house album, but a magical haunted house. Some of the rooms you open the door and it’s just water, like a lake or an ocean. One of the songs takes place on a boat, you’re on the sea.

I would say it’s a little more upbeat, a lot more dynamic, and darker, in either the medieval or Victorian sense. My thing is about haunting – I heard this phrase this year from this horror podcast I listen to: “Haunting is just temporal dislocation.” So I like to think there are Victorian medieval timelines overlapping in this house. Don’t worry about it too much. [Laughs.]

Lots of the songs are about inhabiting inanimate objects. It’s pretty magical. It’s kind a lonely album, but it’s kind of fantastic.

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Future
PAGE OF CUPS
Delightful Surprise | Inner Child | Intuition

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Mt Fog right now is almost entirely a solo project. Are you intending on staying solo or would you wanna work with a full band in the future?

I’ve tinkered with the concept of performing with a live drummer. I think if I ended up having an opportunity to go on a national tour, I might spend the time and energy to get one or two people to play with me. That said, I definitely love seeing solo musicians perform live. I think it can be super compelling.

I personally like the flexibility and the freedom of being a solo performer. When people ask me to perform, I don’t have to check with anyone else’s calendar. Plus I don’t have rehearsal space. So it’s a bit of an energy suck to get a band together. But I also think it has the potential to make the live performance more engaging and more dynamic.

I’m planning a mini Pacific Northwest tour for September, and it’s possible I will try and mix up how I do my life performance for that. But at the same time, I think a lot of times people wanna come see me perform because they wanna see me sing. So I think at a certain level, you just gotta focus on one thing and do it well. I don’t have unlimited time, so for me right now, working on the new music has been a priority over trying to get a band to perform live with me.

You’ve got some shows coming up in July and August, right?

I have a show this Friday [June 24th]. Yeah. And that’s gonna be at Drongo Tapes’ house in the U District. The tape label that released my album, Ghost Mountain, is doing a special showcase at Vera Project. I’m playing with Supernowhere at Chop Suey, and then in August I’m playing at Nectar Lounge with Intisaar & Hall and Fruit Juice. I’m trying to put together a mini Northwest tour.

People are like, “Just do like one performance every few months so you can just focus on that,” and I’m like, “No way.” I love performing so much. Every time people ask me to play, it’s so hard for me to say no. Sometimes I do have to say no, but I just love performing now. I used to hate it, and now I love it. I love every part of it.

You mentioned halfway through that music is therapeutic for you. Is this project something you aim to continue for as long as it provides that therapy?

Yeah, I don’t see myself stopping. I think some people in my life would like it if I took a break so I could do other things. I might try to do that this fall, just take a concerted break and try not to write new music. What happened is that I started writing new music immediately after I released my other music. While I was working on it, I was working on new material. So I probably have 25 songs in my computer, and 10 of them I took to the next level and made this album.

It’s just very therapeutic to me. I go into a Zen state. It makes me happy. I’ve met the coolest people doing music too. and that’s been such a bright spot. During the beginning of the pandemic, I was connecting with people on Instagram, and then at a certain point I thought, “What if instead of a parasocial relationship, we were friends?” I’ve made some good friends, and it’s been amazing.