Dorio

Dorio

“Good morning. Welcome to Super Love 3. Thank you for being here.” A placeless pop concierge, like a VHS instructional training video, welcomes you to Dorio’s new album. Offering a fully illustrated sound world, Super Love 3 strikingly expands the Austin-based project’s meticulously handmade sonic universe. Wake up in a world of indie pop and electronic elements, pulled from dusty CD shelves, internet archives, and other escapes. It’s the most complete expression of multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer Chad Doriocourt’s musical vision yet.

Co-written with core Dorio collaborator Rachel Rascoe, the wildly inventive LP presents a space-age-meets-today meld. Super Love 3 was written during a period spent ordering out-of-press CDs from the late 90s and early 2000s, especially with forms of Italo pop, Japanese Shibuya-kei, and minimalist classical arrangements. Equally indebted to the 90s-does-60s reinvention ethos of Stereolab and Pizzicato Five, Dorio looks to places where influences stack, like a picture of a picture, with unexpected new ideas. On Super Love 3, sprightly breakbeats meet warm acoustic and electric fuzz guitar. It’s a nice place to land.

“I’m happiest when I’m just in my own world, you know?” says Dorio. “And sometimes I get scared to exit that world. The narrator is this voice in my head. The phone ringing is like a wake-up call, from a dream, in a new place.” 

“It’s a sonically textured environment that could either be overwhelming or comforting, depending on the way you're receiving it,” says Rachel “On the album, it feels like there's a million little moments of picking up the phone. There’re so many resets and different entryways.” 

Dorio’s third LP continues work with the label Earth Libraries. Innovative inspiration, from OutKast to Air’s Moon Safari, merges into a collection fit for fans of modern acts Ginger Root and Pearl & the Oysters. Flood Magazine described Dorio’s sound as “an upbeat form of bubblegum-pop and hip-hop percussion that recalls the recent neo-psych output of Stones Throw Records.” The parts cohere under the artist’s decisively contemporary perspective, which includes production and engineering work for other Texas bands. 

“I always set out to just have this simple acoustic song, but I don't think it's in my DNA,” says Dorio. “I'll try my hardest, but then my brain just starts firing off ideas. It’s like, this song needs something, because it's not interesting to me right now. It's not making me excited yet.”

The escapist, existential soundscape came together in the Dorio home studio, where plastic jewel cases display atop towering 1980s tape machines. A 2010s Panasonic landline phone acts as both a tchotchke and an instrument, providing button beeps alongside an ARP synthesizer. Created in their living room, almost a decade into their relationship, the album applies Dorio’s hopeful pop lens to themes of both daily drudgery and personal renewal. 

Since their last LP, Chad wrapped up a late-night music venue job, while Rachel left a long-time role as a music columnist and editor at the local alt-weekly newspaper. Creatively revived, the duo approached Super Love 3 with renewed availability and experience as co-songwriters. The album extends their push-and-pull, salty-sweet duets to co-writing, featuring both pocket-sized love songs and quizzical self-examinations. 

“I didn’t start singing in Dorio until I randomly asked to one day, hearing a song through our living room wall,” says Rachel. “We've been together so long, but there has been so much change in the format of how we create in Dorio and how we relate. In that mode, I think some of our lyrics are asking questions or seeking comfort from each other.”

One night, Chad showed Rachel the title line of closing track “Every Day Feels Like Tomorrow” while she was cooking in the kitchen. He leaned in the doorway and blasted a drum machine dance beat, and she sang the cheeky hook. “I need to lock it with a key, some chemical relief. Tried pop psychology, it didn’t change my mind.” Lyrics hone in on the eternal desire for small resets and quick fixes, whether a haircut, bad tattoo, or alarm clock. 

“Wake up on a different side. Look past the other night,” the duo sings on “Make My World.” But in such a complex world, can you really reinvent yourself? 

“Not being able to change your mind could be a negative sentiment,” says Rachel. “But obsessing over new things that will make you change and feel better can also be a distraction. A lot of this is about the highs and lows of that escapism.”

“Some of the album is about how we relate and help each other with difficult stuff,” says Dorio. “But, by talking and working together so much, we also maybe feed into each other’s anxieties. It’s both.” 

Especially for Super Love 3, Dorio’s global broadcast invites a roving cast of Texas-based players. The track features CJ Eliasen on drums, David Alvarez on keys, Paulo Santos on flute, and Kenken Gorder on trumpet, with all other instruments played by Dorio. Supporting eight standalone songs, four interstitial mini tracks drive the Super Love 3 narrative (“Welcome to Super Love 3”, “Panasonic No. 1”, “You Are Listening”, “A Farewell”). A narrator, arpeggiator, and ear-worming motifs connect the restlessly groovy storyline.

Ultimately, Super Love 3 finds relief in escape to Dorio’s “Stereo World,” a theme song for the world-building record. “Walk in your stereo world ‘cause you know you’re not usual,” sings Dorio in his half of back-and-forth vocals. Full moon overhead, headphones on, he conjures a place and time “when you float alone, late in the dark, and you can’t get enough.” In that Dorio world, colors swirl: The LP cover was inspired by 1980s Italian magazines, with photos taken at their friend Dean’s mod time capsule apartment. Overall, nonlinear influences coalesce in an elegant expansion of Dorio’s retrofuturist pop universe. Open your eyes, and you’ve arrived. 

Dorio’s Super Love 3 follows their latest double single, The Drive Collection (2024). Following a national tour in support of the album Strawberry Dream (2023), the Dorio live band has played shows with artists including Video Age, Omni, Peel Dream Magazine, and Katy Kirby. 

RIYL: Stereolab, Pizzicato Five, Pearl & the Oysters, Ginger Root