 by Rob van Alstyne
Martin Dosh is a man of seemingly many contradictions—an artist with a degree in creative writing who crafts music almost entirely devoid of words, the creator of dizzyingly clever and layered instrumental recordings who self-effacingly calls himself “just a drummer.” His just-released second solo album, Pure Trash, continues the trend in contradiction, its dozen cuts of elegant and jazzy instrumental glitch pop about the furthest thing possible from the skuzzy collection of garage rock its title would suggest.
Download an mp3 of Dosh’s song I Think I’m Getting Married.
 It
sounds horribly clichéd, but Dosh’s music truly is “like nothing
you’ve ever heard before.” Dosh’s work is a blend of near constant
percussive activity and warm keyboard lines (most supplied courtesy of his vintage
Rhodes) woven together obsessively with an ear for nuance all too often missing
in the beat-driven instrumental scene. Cuts like “I Think I’m Getting
Married” swerve between organic human drum kit sounds and jittery bleep-blips
for its rhythmic foundation, while incorporating gently strummed acoustic guitars,
various chimes, wistful saxophone meanderings and a bed of synthesizer melodies
on the high end. With a sound this full, it’s hard to imagine making room
for a singer.
“The thing I like most about instrumental music is that it can always mean
whatever you want it to,” claims Dosh over an early evening pint shortly
before heading overseas on touring duty with Fog (Andrew Broder’s high profile
avant-rock band for which he drums). “Anytime you put lyrics on something
it automatically limits what it can mean. With instrumental music you’re
still trying to get an emotional response from people, but that response can be
completely different from person to person—it’s sort of whatever they
choose to make of it.”
What Dosh himself chooses to make of it is revealed only through his song titles;
fortunately those are rather transparent. When a cut titled “I Think I’m
Getting Married” segues into the stately piano exercise of “Bring
the Happiness,” it’s pretty clear where the artist’s head is
at. Other cuts include “Naoise” (pronounced na-shee and the name of
Martin’s recently born son) and “Building a Strange Child.”
The brief snippets of sampled dialogue on the record include a woman talking about
pregnancy, school children playing during recess and the effects-treated cries
of infants. One would have to be a few steps slow not to deduce that the former
full-time musician bachelor has recently settled down into family life.
 “My
life has just gotten progressively more insane since Naoise was born,” admits
Dosh readily. “But it’s all working out. Basically I have a house
over my head, a decent job, a label that will put out my records—a lot of
people wish they could be in that situation. I don’t know that I’m
ever going to break through to any larger success but I’m totally content
to just kind of live my life and make music when I can in my basement.”
At times Dosh’s basement audio tapestries on Pure Trash sound like
pieces of masterful cut-and-paste laptop pop. It’s easy to imagine Dosh
as an obsessive record collector weaving together archaic samples into a new and
dangerous hybrid ala DJ Shadow. Dosh’s actual methods are far different.
“It’s a loop-based project, but most of the loops are things that
I played live at one point in time,” explains Dosh. “I’ll take
an old four-track recording from something that I did six years ago of say just
some drums, keyboards and vocals and I’ll isolate the drum part within it
that I like and just build a whole new song around that brief sample of my playing.
For the most part writing and recording are the same thing for me, I finish recording
a song and then have to figure out how to actually play it live later. There’s
a heavy dose of improvisation in the whole process, just sort of going back through
all the mountains of old tapes and trying to pick out the good stuff.”
A sampling man whose source material is his own playing doesn’t quite fit
in with the typical progressive DJ fold, yet there’s no place music of this
strongly idiosyncratic bent naturally resides. It takes merely one glimpse of
Dosh’s frenzied one-man band live show—both feet and hands active
at all times, body splayed across various vintage keyboards and kick drum set-ups—to
understand you’re witnessing music from a genre unto itself. It’s
a problem Dosh doesn’t mind having. Within the open-minded Twin Cities community
he’s found the seemingly perfect place for his maverick forward-thinking
sounds.
 “Everybody
knows everybody here in Minneapolis so if you have something to give a lot of
people are going to want to play with you,” claims Dosh (who remains an
in-demand drummer about town and has contributed behind the kit to forthcoming
albums from Vicious Vicious and Fitzgerald). “It makes for a lot of nice
crosspollination. I’ll admit I’m biased, but I think Minneapolis is
one of the most creatively diverse towns around, even more so than someplace like
Austin. In Minneapolis all of the jazz guys dig electronic music and all of the
electronic guys will go and check out something like the Clown Lounge. People
support music that they don’t necessarily play, which is special, and I
think people are more willing to incorporate different sounds.”
Recording on four-tracks on his own for nearly a decade, it’s been only
in the last few years that the former New Yorker (he moved to Minneapolis in 1997)
has made the leap into the public eye with his groundbreaking and provocative
solo work. Now that he’s finally getting his time in the spotlight (including
a hefty promotional push from his prestigious internationally distributed Oakland-based
label Anticon), Dosh remains humble when talking about his musical journey. “I
was always sort of just sitting there wondering if it was good and thinking about
minute details on the recordings,” explains Dosh of his early recording
years. “So to finally get to a place where other people heard the music
and liked it enough to put it out was really reassuring. People seem to like it
for what it is, which is great—that’s all you can really ask for.”
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Dosh plays the CD release party for Pure Trash on Thu.,
Nov. 4, at the Triple Rock Social Club with America’s John Davis, Gloryland
Ponycat and Cepia. 10 p.m. 21+. $6. 629 Cedar Ave. S., Mpls. 612-333-7399.
Check out Dosh on his record label’s official
website.
Download an mp3 of Dosh’s song I Think I’m Getting Married.
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