Fogart: Smatter 2016-2022

Often it is the case that if you have met someone personally, it can either make or break their art for you as the consumer. I’m guilty of this all too often. It is an easy job to listen to a few seconds of someone speaking or singing, and I harshly label it as not good enough. I’m going into this review with a big bias. I’ve met charles delong, and it only made his music better. In a world of posers, we have to cheer on the real ones.

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Pieced together twenty (20) snippets and songs make up something that feels like a radio movie. It is downstairs that compelled me to write this review in the first place. In this recording we hear delong speaking to his future self. ‘I hope you are listening to this at an old old age’, and recounts a dream of being part of a bear clan at war. Could it be that in another life, delong was a futuristic bear on another planet? One could only hope. The machine beat and diminished chords on shove my pillows in a corner easily make it one of my favorite songs on the record. We are pushed back into reality with a recording of pouring rain and a simple motif on the piano with rain. The cheeky roll call at the beginning of they won’t hurt you makes me laugh. The man is so sincere with his roll call, I could mistake him for a religious leader. If therapy were a musical I think it would sound like heaven. How many of us have sat with our therapists and have spoken of those ‘circles’. Because really, we are all ‘going to mess this up’. All tracks boast the nostalgic and searching sounds of youth. mutter brings in the shift. It seems to say we are near the end, but we have so much to learn. melancholy summer states ‘this one’s for you’, and I don’t think we can deny that. Smatter is a heartfelt addition into the space of recorded sound.

Find it on: https://fogart.bandcamp.com/releases