'It’s all happening somewhere else' / DoloRRes [Track by Track Breakdown]
DoloRRes breaks down the ins and outs of his debut EP It’s All Happening Somewhere Else
Local Naarm rapper, producer, songwriter and all-round creative powerhouse DoloRRes releases his debut 6-track EP It’s All Happening Somewhere Else via SameSame Records. The tweaking of the EP came around after DoloRRes kicked off his signature style of self-produced, left-field Hip Hop in early 2020 with debut single “Fluffy Dice” and joined good friend and frequent collaborator Agung Mango on the festival circuit. Now, the EP is the product of years of collaboration and creation, lending itself to a diverse collection of tracks that jump between genre and meaning.
Verve was lucky enough to chat to DoloRRes about the creation of the EP, including a track by track breakdown of It’s All Happening Somewhere Else. Read below.
How It Feels!!!
What is your thought process that goes into the opening track of a body of work? How important do you think it is to set up the rest of the EP?
I think the opening track is just as important as the closing track, and just as important as the middle track, and so on. I've always considered myself a project artist, and most of my favourite albums are ones that flow well, that have a central narrative or theme or concept. It just makes things feel bigger than they actually are, it adds an additional layer to the listening experience, it's like world-building. I know a good intro track when I hear one, so when it came time to start thinking about the order of the E.P was trying to decide what the intro track should be, I came across an old loop on my laptop and I thought it sounded like an intro track so I fleshed it out. Also lyrically it's kind of an introduction to the rest of the E.P cos it's literally just a song about me listening to music, like an homage to music as an art form, but described as this euphoric and psychedelic feeling.
Heelys
“Heelys” was the first single off the EP. Where in the process did you write this track? Had it been sitting in the vault for a while before the rest of the EP took shape? Or is it a more recent track?
Heelys was lying in the vault for quite a while and it's one of the older songs on the project. That being said though, all of my songs spend some time in the vault, as a default. Hopefully that will change in the future, I'm getting tired of the vault. Yeah the beat for this song (or at least the first version, which sounds quite different) was made in early 2019 or maybe late 2018 and was originally meant for TKay [Tkay Maidza], over time I just kept revisiting the beat and improving it. The lyrics were mostly pieced together from different one liners and bars I had lying around on the notes app on my phone while I was travelling, hence the euro-flexing. I think I wrote the bridge bit where the beat drops out in New York. That used to be my writing process, writing short little one liners and bars in one big note, and whenever it came time to write a verse or a chorus I would just grab from that list, cross off what I've used and collage it. Now not so much.
Subdivide
Your ability to swerve between genres and styles is very prevalent across this EP and specifically in “Subdivide” blending multiple genres and moods to create this upbeat, pulsating pallet of sonic bliss.
Considering the grandeur of the song and its production - what was the process in recording this track, where did it all start and how did it end up?
Thank you, I like those descriptions. This song is a big blur to me honestly. I started the instrumental side of it sometime last year when I was living in a bungalow. I've wanted to make this kind of song since I was like 13 so I'm not sure what made me try it, I think I was just in an experimental place at the time, lockdown and all, I guess it's just one of the many experiments that happened to work. It started with the opening riff, and then just kept getting longer and longer, I really just make it up as I go along, some of the percussion on this song is just pots and pans and other random things around house, including the fuel tank from my motorcycle, just slapping a lot of stuff.
Sometimes I add parts from other songs of mine that didn't work out and I see how they fit. That noisy intro before the bass is lifted directly from a totally different song which was more like an industrial hardcore trap thing. Again I just worked on it slowly over several months. The lyrics also came in piece by piece, and took ages. I often finish the instrumental side of the song way before I finish writing the words, and for this song especially, because it's so big and intense and multi-phased, I struggled for a long time trying to think what this song could even be about. I think I wrote most of the first section on the tram, bunch of trams, and other public transport which was giving me a lot of paranoia at the time.
I was also researching concepts of time and the self, this idea of immortality through subdivision of time. There's a finite amount of things a person generally does in a lifetime, so if you can somehow manage your time so well to the point that you do all of that in just half your life, then you can live out a whole extra life's worth of things. So essentially you have lived two lifetimes in one, and if you keep subdividing your time, you live more and more lives until you are theoretically immortal. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but that was the main inspiration for this song. There's a lot more layers behind the theme of this track but that would take too long, maybe another time. Oh also there's a recording of this talk that David Foster Wallace gave at some university that inspired a lot of the lyrical themes for this song.
[In creating this track] I was researching concepts of time and the self… essentially, if you keep subdividing your time, you live more and more lives until you are theoretically immortal.
Bitter Cold (feat. Manny Müla & Savage the Girl)
You are no stranger to collaboration and features. How did the features in “Bitter Cold” come about and how many other people worked on specifically the production and music side of this project?
This song was also made last year in the bungalow, and is one of the very instances where the words came in really quickly, like in just a few days. The song basically sat like that until I could find a feature, I just wanted a feature on this song, so I just hit Manny up and asked him for a 16. I think I was also considering Porter but he wasn't making music at the time. It took several months for me and Manny to actually get into the studio together. I'm a big believer of being in the room with someone, I don't like sending or receiving verses with people I've never met. So I try to avoid it when I can. Which is exactly why I drove to Wyndham Vale to record this, and got lost for almost two hours because my phone died on the way there, ended up on some dirt road in the middle of nowhere, it was crazy.
Eventually got to the house, found Manny there waiting for me wondering where I was. I think he wrote it there and then, lighting in the bottle kind of thing, recorded it in the garage and then that was done. Later on I was revisiting the outro which was originally just instrumental, and thought it needed some vocals so I wrote that little hook and sang it in my head, thought it would sound way better if Savage sang it, so I got her to come over and that was that.
There's a fair few people lending a helping hand with the E.P's sound, essentially acting as session musicians. If there was any part of a song that I couldn't actually physically play, I would hit up Nikodimos, get him to play some keys, call up Lucky, get him to do drums. Gus and Rue if I needed backing vocals. I just kind of contact people and try to explain what I want, and they did amazing with their contributions.
D.T.R
“D.T.R” was the latest single off the EP and is also one of the most melodic songs vocally, how has your path from rapping to incorporating singing progressed since you started writing music?
It's progressed quite a lot, and it's still progressing. I'm not that good of a singer so I've only recently gotten good enough at writing and production and vocal effects/recording techniques to make up for it. I've just been singing more and more and experimenting with different kinds of songwriting. When I started making music early in highschool I would just search up "MF DOOM instrumental" and then write some rhymes and try to sound like I was from New York. And yeah over time I just tried pushing my voice as much as I could and here we are. I still like to rap, and that's still a lot of what I do, I've gotten much better at it. But it's fun to try weird stuff for a change.
Another encapsulating element I've noticed across the EP / in your production is the use of beat switch ups and adding surprising little pockets of sound scapes throughout a track, for example the outro to “D.T.R”. Do you have any favourite moments within the EP that maybe most people might not catch?
In regards to beat switches, yeah I love them, I like playing around with the arrangement and structure of a song. I spend most of my time producing, so the beat or instrumental almost always comes first. And then if it turns into a song, I'll add lyrics at the very last minute. Because I sort of make these beats without a vocal in mind, I often go kind of overboard with the instrumentation to kind of compensate, a constant loop just sounds too boring so I have to add a switch up or a bridge in all of my songs basically as a force of habit, I can't stop myself. Also when I started listening to Pharrell, he changed the way I produce. Especially N.E.R.D and how he always adds that crazy bridge in almost all his songs, and it's always such a left hook but it always fits perfectly too, he toes the line. There's like a thousand little instrumental easter eggs all throughout the E.P, but I don't think they're hard to catch, it's all pretty in your face.
Overkill
With wonky, nostalgic acoustic guitar chords, lush choir-esque vocal phrases and a shredding lead guitar solo to close out the EP, a sense of ease and familiar bliss wash over you. How has incorporating these acoustic elements and instruments on this track and the rest of the EP helped sculpt the DoloRRes sound so far and how far do you want to take it in future releases?
This song is quite different for me, I wanted to make something that felt like an underwater sunset. There’s a little snippet in the music video for Doorman where slowthai goes in the toilet, there’s this lil song that plays while he’s swimming that I was obsessed with, so I got inspired a lil by that and also I became obsessed with slide guitar at the same time, listening to a lot of old blues recordings, all the guitarists and singers like Blind Willie Johnson and Blind Willie McTell, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Elizabeth Cotton. I just love the sound of the guitar sliding all around. So that was the motivation. I've been adding more and more guitar and saxophone into my songs. I honestly have no idea where I’m gonna push this sound in the next few years. I might switch up and make a Triphop album. Also the singers on this song are all just friends and housemates who came by my room and I’ve convinced them to jump on the mic. I was tryna get Gorillaz - Dirty Harry kind of energy. I hope it translates well.
I wanted to make something that felt like an underwater sunset.
Credit: Alex Millen
Article by Eugene Argiro https://www.instagram.com/(eugene.acab)
Images by Khushi (@girlsthatmosh)
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