The Dosages is the duo unit of Samm Bennett on WaveDrum, percussion and vocal, and Jyoji Sawada on electric and/or acoustic bass, and sometimes piano or guitar. They first met many years ago in Tokyo, but only briefly worked together at a couple of points in the 1990s and early 2000s: first in a group
put together by trumpeter Frank London (to accompany butoh performances of Min Tanaka and dancers) and later in a recording session for Jyoji's Brazilian string trio Choro Club,
with special guest Arto Lindsay.
In 2011 and 2012 they came together again to provide music for performances by "bondage" artist Arisue Go, and realized they
shared a kind of similar musical orientation that would necessitate their working together on a more regular basis!
They connect deeply at an elemental rhythmic level, creating a seamless, subterranean groove that moves like water, like electrons, like a black cloud of birds in the sky. Jyoji's bass lines are not exactly "lines", in the way that term is generally understood, but more like percussive melodies that pour forth from some primal font of organic expression. Samm and Jyoji's rhythmic dialogue is not founded on adherence to patterns or forms, but on the continually evolving necessitudes of spontaneous interplay. They convolve and intertwine with the same sense of purpose as clinging vines growing along the branches of a tree or chain link fence.
This steadily unfolding, organic pulse is then the canvas to
which Samm brings his vocal lines and songs: moving on top
of and alongside the groove like sand blowing over a desert,
like a snake undulating across the forest floor, like fireflies darting through a black summer night.
THE DOSAGES videos