by SCOTT C

Andrew Broder is a puzzle piece that doesn't really seem to fit in anywhere. His music is a strange and varied grab bag of beats, noise, turntablism, vocal experimentation and instrumental open ends, tipping his hat to many genres, taking what he needs and moving on. Signed to Ninja Tune as Fog, his left-of-centre approach to music has managed to reach the ears of many interested in broadening their listening experiences.

Broder returns to Montreal this week to perform a much more stripped-down version of his music, armed only with a guitar and maybe a keyboard to communicate his "message."

"I know it's weird to say," Broder confesses, "but I try to make a conscious effort to not be conscious of what I'm doing when I'm making music. That's not to say that I'm in some sort of trance when I'm working, because I put a lot of thought into what I do, but the kind of stuff that I like to listen to kind of transcends genre. I guess I feel a strange responsibility to keep up that sort of idea."

Having just finished working out the kinks of his next Fog release, Broder seems a little foggy on what the actual "work" part of putting out records for a living is. "You've got to treat this like work in the best sense of the word, which I'm not very good at and trying to get better at. It's a weird job. It's a weird thing to be a musician and draw lines between the things that are really obnoxious and job-like about it, like writing about yourself in the third person for your press release. Some of that shit is just awkward and you really don't want to do it, but you have to.

"The idea of putting all your weird internal shit out there for the world to see is a strange job to have. Your job is to emote, or something. I'm not complaining, though."

With Harris Newman & Bruce Cawdron at Casa del Popolo on Saturday, Aug. 28, 9 p.m., $8

>> Music Listings