Dosh / Lost Take

Anticon

The Lost Take reimagines Dosh the man as Dosh the band. On his third solo release, the keyboardist and drummer takes his expertly arranged loops, smashes them and spreads them all over the album's twelve tracks. Instead of puzzle-piecing pre-recorded bits together, Dosh builds surprisingly organic soundscapes out of live improvisations. Relying on raw, written instrumentation, these miniature opuses begin with Dosh's emotive drumming and Rhodes playing. Later, a hand-picked cast of Minneapolis musicians add guitar, saxophone, bass, violin, clarinet and pedal steel to the mix.  "One Through Seven" begins the album with what sounds like an old violin sample floating over a bubbling keyboard melody. Dosh steers the drums in and out of a march, flouting the time signature, but never derailing the composition. Mike Lewis (Fog, Happy Apple) chases the rhythm with his sax as the song unfolds. Dosh makes his vocal debut on "Everybody Cheer Up Song," brightening the tune with his soft-spoken delivery. "Um, Circles and Squares" captures the spirit of the album perfectly, with Dosh looping Andrew Bird's violin around a fast-paced bass-synth sequence doubled by a serene Rhodes motif. As technical as it might seem on paper, the song plays gorgeously. Dosh amazes with his ability to trick the human ear--"Pink Floyd Cowboy Sound" brings to mind Broken Social Scene's warmth and layered mastery with four contributors instead of forty--but The Lost Take never sounds pretentious or intangible. Instead, it's the very natural sound of a damn good band. A band named Martin Dosh. 

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