Dosh – Dosh (Anticon)

[V Knid esq]

Those of you familiar with the Ninjatune releases by The Fog might just about be ready for the shambolic nature of this instrumental release by the dude who played the organs and drums on those records. Like The Fog (but without the Kid Koala style wonky scratch rhythm patterns), Dosh’s music seems to be permanently falling to pieces. Everything here sounds roughly jammed, almost random, arbitary, held together with long strips of not-very-sticky sellotape. Off-kilter home-recorded drum loops are edited with strange start and end points and clashingly superimposed on each other; distant sheets of Kevin Shields-y feedback guitar squeal away in the background while simple organ and chime melodies repeat out of phase with one another like a sort of kindergarten Steve Reich. The production values are… individual, to say the least, and any kind of conventional song structure is torn apart and thrown up in the wind and played as it lies. And yet somehow, with each listen you start to see a crazy kind of logic or at least demented force of will behind it all. Someone has decided that this is the way this music is meant to sound, and as snippets of melody or chance agreements of beat seduce you into this off-key mindset, you find yourself starting to accept that insane proposition. Heard from certain angles it’s deeply uncomfortable stuff, reminiscent of the thoughts of a fucked and dysfunctional mind – those raw hours when nothing going on in your head seems to sync with itself or with the world around you - yet the very same track, with a tilt of the brain, can resolve in an instant into glorious and unique patterns. Either way, it’s a testament to the joys and frustrations of improvisation and a fantastic antidote to the tedium of too much programmed music and predictable culture. Bear with this record, force yourself to get past its wilful neurotic lo-fi façade, accept its nonsense logic and the rewards will be rich. Listen to it when you are a little too susceptible and you may find you end up turning into a mentalist child, headbutting your turntables, playing a toy xylophone with your feet and loving the sound. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.