Artist Profile: Dorio
Dorio, the soothing indie-pop duo of Chad Doriocourt and Rachel Rascoe, has formed from the eclectic tastes of its founders, and Super Love 3, their upcoming project, signifies a sort of renaissance in their collaborative prowess and the fusion of their individual sounds, marking a culmination of their years of musical development and experimentation.
Dorio started when Chad, after playing in multiple bands throughout high school, began self-recording and producing solo work inspired heavily by his love for classic rock as well as the international tunes he had discovered in his work as online radio host.
His first project, Yesterday the Sky Was Blue, reflects the style of guitar-playing that Chad had taken on in these earlier days and is almost wholly composed of his own vocals and instrumentation. However, on one song, “10 Years”, Chad had his long-time romantic partner, Rachel, accompany him on vocals. The creative connection between the two was recognized immediately.
While Rachel had received musical training throughout her childhood, it was through Dorio that she received her first steps into the world of produced music. An incredibly talented artist, she brought a plethora of contributions to the duo that helped to fill the gaps in Chad’s sonic wisdom.
Their first album together, Strawberry Dream, revealed the full potential of their work together.
“On our last album [Strawberry Dream], she provided melodies and stuff that my voice and my vocals weren't filling out that well. I would be producing… and [think that] something's still not right, but I don't know what it is,” said Chad, “Then Rachel would come and kind of tweak the lyrics and then add her vocals, and we talked about it: gave feedback on the song in general. And then it would open it up and just feel finished. Sometimes maybe that's just one sentence, or sometimes it's the whole song, but just having a trusted ear is really helpful for me.”
At the same time, Chad brought a streamlined process of production and creation to Rachel’s never-ending flow of ideas, enabling the duo to harness their unique workflow into a concrete stream of output.
“As a producer, Chad’s really great at editing down and shaping songs,” said Rachel, “I like to come up with tons of ideas and just throw them at him, and he’ll figure out the structure later on. I love how intuitive he is deciding ‘yes, that fits’ or ‘that’s not the right fit.’ He really has the mood in mind of how he wants a Dorio song to be. That world-building perspective, and consistency, is so helpful.”
Now, on their newest project, Chad and Rachel’s individual styles have fused into a wonderful blend of the jangle-pop production, synth-driven instrumentation, singer-songwriter foundations, and hip-hop inspired drum beats that have peeked through the enmeshed factors of their sound in the past.
Chad says that this, in a sense, is an intentional bearing and re-invention of their distinct influences; Super Love 3 is, in short, a simultaneous return to the roots of the duo’s sonic interests and a pushing at the boundaries of their sound as it has been previously defined.
“I think we're both trying to not shy away from what our natural tastes were and are, yeah. I feel like we found our sound and who we are as musicians, so now it's kind of embracing that fully. A lot of that [involved] going back to some of the early influences that we… didn't want to embrace as much, not trying to force anything. Force is good whenever you want a project to sound like a certain thing, but, at a certain point, it’s like, ‘This is who we are. Let's embrace that.’”
With a larger group of collaborators, Super Love 3 is a fresh development from the tantalizing duo and promises to be an excellent step forward in their discography.