On the lead single from Dorian Concept’s new record, What We Do For Others, the lyrics are mostly inaudible, vocals warped beyond recognition into an alien choir of pitchshifted yelps and howls. The one phrase we can make out, though – just about recognisable within the freewheeling carnival of synths and drums – is the insistent imperative of the song’s title: “let it all go”. This lyric seems to serve as a guiding philosophy for the project, which saw Austrian electronic musician and synth savant Oliver Johnson wilfully abandoning the impulse to deliberate over every detail of his productions in pursuit of an elusive perfection. Instead, he chose to embrace the magic of the first take, channelling the initial outpouring of creative energy and excitement that often accompanies the birth of an idea into a fearless thread of spontaneity that runs through the entire album.
“I’ve always had this drive to do things ‘properly’ – to somehow strive for perfection,” Oliver explains. “But this is an album about me letting go of that urge – about understanding that there’s something magical that happens in these first takes we often call drafts. A spirit is captured, and once you try to re-record it, the essence of the idea gets lost. So in a way I wanted to see how little ‘control’ I could exert on the music whilst recording it – to almost let the music make itself.”
As a result, What We Do For Others has a joyfully improvisatory spirit at its heart, one that recalls the jaw-dropping one-take synth jam videos Johnson has been known to share on social media.
We caught up with Dorian Concept following the release of to find out more about how the album was made
