DOLORRES

Words/Interview: Joseph Maranta

Images: Supplied via Trackwork and @dolorres

Let’s do a word association test. When I say the word renegade what springs to mind?

For some it might be an entrepreneurial innovator. Perhaps Steve Jobs? He did wear turtlenecks before their post-ironic resurgence, which did shatter the status quo of the time. For others it may be politicians or political activists, Che Guevera fits the bill. Regardless of whether you view him as a liberator or an oppressor - he defied conventions, remained steadfast in his beliefs and yielded to no authority. 

But to me, someone who is Aus-music-pilled beyond reason, my first association with the word Renegade is DoloRRes. 

An Italian born and sporadically Naarm based rapper / producer, DoloRRes has been lighting up the underground for years. His main value proposition within the at times saturated Australian hip-hop market, is the fact he’s bilingual in his artistry, but this isn’t a gimmick by any means, it's another string in his bow which only further mystifies the unique music he creates. 

Having first gained notoriety through his avant garde dance-adjacent singles, he pivoted into reggaeton with AORA towards the end of 2023. Fast forward to present day and DoloRRes has just released his most daring effort to date, Jacuzzi. 

A collaboration project with Venezuelan-Australian artist Cherry Chola, the global influences on the record are near tangible, a frenzy of erotica, reggaeton and unabashed confidence spliced with production seldom heard in Australian music.  

Released under the independent label Trackwork and facilitated by UTILITY, the project underscores the limitless potential of the renegade, DoloRRes. 

JOE: It’s great to be here in Melbourne with you Martino, so firstly tell me a bit about what ‘REAL LIFE MUSIC’ means to you. 

MARTINO: Real Life Music, to me, represents the first thing that comes to mind - record it, don’t think about it just make it. Sometimes the more time you spend on a song the worse it can be. I want to finish it in as little time as possible. I think if you spend too long on a track it can reduce its authenticity. So in a way, Real Life Music is just spontaneity. 

JOE: Your first song embracing Latin-American elements came with AORA ft Jupita, but prior to that did you have any background in Reggaeton / Latin?

MARTINO: I think AORA might have been the first beat I’d ever made in that style. I’d become closer with Jupita around 2023, and when I dropped BOSCO in italian, the track did really well in Spain so I think a lot of people thought I was speaking Spanish. So I wanted to find out more about Spanish speaking musicians in Melbourne, and Jupita was able to put me on these other genres of music. So all of the kind of latin music that we produced in that time period is a collaborative feat with her, since I’m not from that culture. 

JOE: You’ve just dropped ‘Jacuzzi’ , a collaboration between yourself and Cherry Chola. How did you first meet Cherry Chola and when did you decide to do an album together?

MARTINO: I met her through Jupita and another friend of mine. I listened to her music and it was like nothing else I’d heard being made in Australia, I knew I had to work with her. Eventually Jupita got us together in the studio and we made a few tracks. Cherry then moved to Mexico and I moved to Italy, but after that we told each other we had to do a whole album. 

I think our sounds just fuse together really well, we also both make music for fun, so the music comes very naturally between us. Cherry would give me pointers here and there but I think she works a lot more vocally, she improvises on the spot really well. I sent her heaps of different styles that she hadn’t worked with before, and she had a really willing open mindedness about everything. I also wanted to have her sing a lot on this project, I wanted to hear her over different melodies with autotune, just pushing her voice to different places. 

JOE: The production on Jacuzzi is like nothing else I’ve heard from the Australian scene, where did you get the inspiration for it?

MARTINO: My inspiration came from a variety of different sounds, I was listening to a lot of Arca and Space Africa. It was winter in Italy when I was producing Jacuzzi, so there was a lot of cold and misty air around, so because of that I wanted to make it feel really nocturnal and atmospheric. I was also listening to a lot of obscure latin american music at the time, so many different genres, each with their own intricacies. 

There’s one song on the album, SPINA, which has a sample in its main loop that I grabbed from a club in Milan. The club was a 20 minute bike ride out of Milan towards the airport, and the club itself is within a basement of an Egyptian restaurant. They had live music with belly dancers, these cool Egyptian synthesizers and all of this percussion. I just recorded one of the tracks which was playing and used it as a sample. 

JOE: The project’s cover art is very unique, what was your vision for it?

MARTINO: I wanted something that looked both ancient and alien, like an artifact you’d find in a cave that was a million years old and from another planet. My friend Sarah is an industrial designer and a carpenter, so I commissioned her to design it out of a slab of wood. We went through hundreds of designs and used different symbolism from Italy and Venezuela, like there’s a symbol from an 8000 year old Italian brothel. When it was finished we just shone a bunch of different lights at it and took a photo. I think the physical cover is still at my manager’s house, it’s heavy as fuck. 

JOE: You haven’t played outside of Australia yet, but you have spent many nights as a patron of overseas venues. How do you find the difference between Australian and European crowds?

MARTINO: The difference is that crowds in Europe actually have fun. If 2Hollis or Yung Lean or anyone not from Australia comes to Melbourne, then yeah there will be pandemonium in the pit, sure, but Italians will see an Italian play in Italy and they’ll have the same energy as if they’re at a Playboi Carti show. It’s like that regardless of the venue, its size or who’s playing. I don’t know, crowds in Italy seem to let loose a lot more. Maybe it’s just a cultural thing. 

JOE: As far as politics go, who would you say you hate more, Italian PM Georgia Meloni or Peter Dutton?

MARTINO: Peter Dutton. He’s far uglier. At least Meloni has drip, it counts for something, Dutton is just a fucking egg. But I don’t want to give Meloni any more credit than she deserves.

JOE: Who would be your favourite Italian-Australian?

MARTINO: Franco Cozzo, easy. He was a furniture salesman, he owned some big stores in Footscray and North Melbourne, he died recently unfortunately. There’s an entire documentary about him. I actually met him one time on Sydney Road, I shook his hand. Legendary. 

JOE: Then finally I suppose, why do you rap in Italian?

MARTINO: I was booked to play a rave, and I had to make a bunch of songs within a week that were all dance friendly and I thought lol - fuck it, let me just do one in Italian. My manager ended up really liking it and I decided to release it, also because I’d been on hiatus and hadn’t released any new music in a couple of years. So we dropped BOSCO, it did really well and I just kept doing it. 

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