Our writer Aurora Montgomery went to the Dosh show at Union Hall in Brooklyn last week and wrote all about it. Here it is!
Dosh is comprised of Martin Luther King Chavez Dosh and Michael Lewis. Together they play a myriad of instruments looped and layered on top of each other, building a beautiful hybrid of electronic, improvisational jazz and pop music. I was able to see them last Thursday in the dark and intimate underbelly of Brooklyn’s Union Hall, and spoke to Martin Dosh briefly from his van before the show. We talked a bit about the recently released album, Tommy, which he noted during some witty banter with Michael Lewis in the midst of the performance was not named for the rock opera, but for a dearly departed friend. As far as the recording process for Tommy, Dosh explained that for the last couple of years he’d been working on it almost daily from his basement, where about seventy percent of the album was recorded. Dosh plays with an interesting mix of instruments: drums, electric piano, synthesizers, effects pedals, you name it and it’s probably on the album. When asked about which piece of equipment is his favorite, Dosh affirms that it’s his Akai E1 Headrush Delay/Loop Pedal. While watching the live performance it was obvious why. He sits on a stool surrounded by drums, an electronic piano, bells, glockenspiel, and a slew of pedals and effects; with the loop pedal he can play them all at the same time. He uses the pedal to record a few seconds of drums, plays another rhythm on top of it, builds a melody with the keys and bells, makes noises into a microphone, while the pedal layers and replays each instrument making his (almost) one man band a possibility. Michael Lewis plays bass and saxophone adding to the intensity of the sound. The venue was packed in shoulder to shoulder with a few people sitting on the floor in the front row to get a better view. Their live show is innovative and captivating. They ended the set with “Gare de Lyon,” and I remember thinking that the best-case scenario for the evening would be if the song could have somehow just kept going all night long without stopping.
[Aurora Montgomery]
