Dosh
Biography
By the age of 12, Martin Dosh was already DJing at his junior high school dances in Minneapolis, playing Run DMC, Prince, Devo and New Order to his bemused peers; evidence of a meteoric musical development since Dosh began learning the piano at the age of three. His instinctual feel for music is evident in this virtuoso development, which he cultivated further by heading east to study jazz and percussion at Simon’s Rock College of Bard, Massachusetts. There followed several years of Zappa-esque noodling in his band Como Zoo and a broad education in the ways of avant jazz and freewheeling rock, all cementing Dosh’s love for soulful, hybrid musics and his determination to pursue genuinely new avenues within the fields he was coming to learn.
Having toured with Fog, Dosh eventually signed to Anticon and released his self-titled debut in 2003. A looping collage of shimmering Rhodes organ, bizarrely stuttering yet funky percussion, and spontaneous performance, the album opened new horizons for Dosh, revealing the unexplored possibilities of a musical approach that combined improvisation with the fine-tuning and complex production techniques facilitated by the solo, studio-based ethic. More touring followed, and Dosh developed an approach to live music that showcases his unique composition style in a spontaneous, public setting, making his performances enthralling, one-off events remembered by all who witness them.
With the release of Lost Take in 2006, Dosh has reinvented himself as the full band he’s always wanted to be; his expertly-arranged keyboard and drum loops are shattered and re-spread over the tracks, creating a miniature opus from the mingling of sequenced backing and live improvisation. Throughout Dosh amazes with his ability to trick the human ear, bringing to mind influences as diverse as Broken Social Scene’s spontaneous fuzz symphonies or Squarepusher’s eccentric glitch jazz, and the result is a satisfying, genuinely original exploration of the relation between sequenced and live music.
