AMG Review of Pure Trash

Joshua Glazer
All Music Guide

Ostensibly a hip-hop label, Anticon has done more than any other company to shatter the preconceived notion of what their proclaimed genre can be, replacing the boom-bap of old with a far more colorful swatch of post-rock, experimental, folk, and psychedelic soundscapes upon which a laundry list of post-everything MCs, including Doseone, Why?, Slug, Buck 65, Sage Francis, and more, have laid their poetic musings, in the process reinventing the notion of how a rapper can rap as much as the producers changed how a beat swings. On his second full-length for Anticon, Dosh opens with a chiming children's toy which, soon accompanied by organ, hints at a full-fledged Brian Wilson rainbow-colored explosion. But as is often the case with artists on well-regarded left-field labels, he pushes too hard at times, adding grunting beats that stomp all over the otherwise stirring composition. From there on, Dosh sticks to the damaged sound of music/trash collage. Here it feels like Dosh is reinventing the wheel, although perhaps someone new will be listening.