For decades, the crazy-voiced expressionist doseone has been one of the most creative and unpredictable forces on the underground rap landscape and beyond. Over the years, doseone has played important roles in a ton of important entities, including but not limited to the Anticon Collective, cLOUDDEAD, Themselves, Subtle, and 13 & God. Earlier this year, doseone returned to underground rap in a huge way, teaming up with producer Steel-Tipped Dove to release the album All Portrait, No Chorus on billy woods' Backwoodz Studioz. Now, doseone has another new record made in close collaboration with another producer, and this one has a very different sound.
Dan Keech is a guy that I used to see at indie rock shows in Baltimore decades ago. Even back then, Dan was rapping and producing under the name Height, now Height Keech. (He's pretty tall, but he's not tall enough for that to be his defining feature. Whatever. He can do what he wants.) Height Keech makes a lot of records, and he last appeared on Stereogum when he collaborated with Future Islands' Samuel T. Herring a couple of years ago. Way back in the early '00s, I got my mind blown when I heard him rapping over a sample of the Stooges' "Dirt" at a Baltimore street fair. That's the production style that he uses on Wood Teeth, the new EP that he produced for doseone.
The six-song Wood Teeth EP came out on July 4, and as you can probably tell from the title, it gets into the dissonance between America's stated ideals and its squalid historic reality. doseone has a lot to say on the subject, and he says it by splatting his skittering rasp all over Height Keech's classic fuzz-rock samples. It's a powerful combination, and you can hear it below.
The Wood Teeth EP is out now on Hands Made Records.
