For beauty and terror: A.V. Club runs through all 10 albums in Andrew Broder's download series

Former Fog frontman Andrew Broder's latest project gets him back to focusing on just making music—no more jettisoning record labels, touring, and all the assorted extraneous parts of being in a band. Instead of selling the albums through traditional methods, he's offering them all as free downloads at justn.info/abroder. (Though, he also asks for donations via PayPal to thefog@visi.com.) Below, Decider checks out the whole series, along with streaming audio of each album. (See our Q&A with Broder here.)

1. I Must Fix All The Problems (2 tracks, 35:13)
Broder’s e-mail described it as striving “for beauty and terror,” which is about right. The first track features speaker-straining sheets of guitar tangled up with whirring turntable and throbbing bass—heavy textures and creeping melody that give the distinct impression of severe barometric pressure. The second track is the bends: sudden warmth and orchestral violence.

2. Experts, Specialists (3 tracks, 33:38)
“Distance” begins mid-song buried under tons of aural squall. There’s a momentary illusion of lightness, then revelation: I Must Fix All The Problems' bassy doom is replaced by the trebly type courtesy of clear-cut axe shredding. “Toughen” sends some old song in and out of glassy claustrophobia, while “Wet Match” becomes a screeching tornado with pained seagulls caught in the works.

3. Raw Bulb (4 tracks, 44:42)
Ascension, at last. A record-skip rhythm drives “Gas Leak” to the bright, blaring heavens, and “One Hundred Dollars” stays there with its harsh, hissy high-notes giving way to gorgeous guitar tones and faint drumming. Bass notes bloom underneath that whipped-up guitar as it morphs into static.

4. We Had To Eat The Owl (6 tracks, 36:51)
The first sign of something Foggy comes with “No Argument Here,” whose turntable-affected vocal barking and atmospheric buoyancy recall 2003’s Ether Teeth. “Lasting” is tight but noisier, featuring an impressively unrecognizable clatter; “Revel” opens with guitar timbre that Abe Vigoda would kill for; and “All Automatic” taps industrial sounds but eschews feedback.

5. Suture (8 tracks, 39:07)
The popping, shimmery “Reliance” sounds like a lost broadcast from ’50s radio. “Placate” is a dark menace featuring warped howling. “Goodbye Tom” imagines Burial sans percussion. “Bats” turns train-clang into something from D-Styles’ Phantazmagorea. Still, best of all are “Reasons Not To Go” (it’s almost danceable), and the eerie, minimal thriller “Much.”

6. Unqualified (10 tracks, 63:59)
Broder called this one “music to stab somebody to” with good reason. Unqualified features the series’ most distinctive and violent sound effects: wild, metallic drum-rolls in “Whipscorpion,” bursting bombs in “Likes And Dislikes,” mbira-imitating distortion clusterfucks in “At A Loss,” Sunn O)))-worthy guitar skronk in “Shooting Blanks,” and ear-ripping frequencies in “We Shall Overcome.”

7. Think About Every Problem You Have At The Same Time (1 track, live, 37:00)
A live set from SXSW released the very next morning, this long-player exemplifies the spirit that kicked off this experiment: a slowly searing air typified by waves of blown-out guitar melody, odd cut-up bells and whistles, crashes, smashes, and all manner of mechanical bluster and deeply sinister quiet times.

8. Rap Ballads (7 tracks, 37:06)
The pretty one. He finds a good track, sees it through, and moves on, resulting in warm masterpieces like “Sleeping Pills,” which achieves an ocean-adjacent ambience to make No Age proud. “Grateful” also brings crashing surf to mind, while “Am I Early?” builds to a big, choral resolution.

9. Spiraling (7 tracks, 40:12)
The opener’s sub-bass boom and guitar tremolo seem to signify the coming of something terrible, yet Spiraling is the warmest of the 10 albums. Among many highlights: the melodic oases scattered throughout “Infantile Scrawling,” the abutting tonal progression of “Glimpse,” and the cello-meets-airliner harmonic drone of “Where The Guy Gets Killed.”

10. Remaining (2 tracks, 45:35)
Remaining features the longest track yet—a return to hellfire with bassier distortion and disorienting panning. It’s richer than I Must Fix All The Problems, though, and between the din and the silences, an unexpected Fuck Buttons-like meditative groove develops. The second, final track makes an intentionally ugly, face-first crash into the ether from whence it came.