1.For those that have never heard of you before, can you tell us a little bit about the solo project?
Yeah, My name is Jordan Rankin, I live in Falkirk, Scotland, and Dorchadas is a solo Atmospheric Black Metal project that I started at the tail end of 2019, and have been pretty much constantly working at since.
2.In April you released a new ep, musically how does it differ from the stuff you have released in the past?
I took more inspiration from old school Black Metal and Doom Metal, so I really tried to simplify the riffs and make them more droning/ritualistic. I slowed them down quite a bit and decided to leave out blast beats and that for a change. Also for this release, I done the full thing in the Reaper DAW, where I usually use Ableton/Audacity, I like to constantly mess about with different DAWs and recording set ups to try out different sounds.
3. A lot of your lyrics cover Gaelic Folklore, can you tell us a little bit more about your interest in this topic?
I’ve always had a massive love for Gaelic/Scottish folklore, I love nature and the idea of it being this supernatural/otherworldly thing. It definitely comes from my mum. She would always tell me stories when I was wee about faeries, elementals, forest spirits etc, and our house was always full of folklore books and sculptures of the Green Man and stuff like that. She’s really witchy and it absolutely rubbed off on me hahaha.
4.Lyrically you have also covered Lovecraftian themes, can you tell us a little bit more about your interest in the writings of H.P Lovecraft?
Lovecraftian Horror has always been my favourite genre, the idea of horrors beyond comprehension and ancient gods from space and all that. When I try and write dark and creepy lyrics I just automatically go there and try and capture the feeling that I get from reading H.P Lovecraft and other Lovecraft influenced media.
5.I know that the bands name means 'Darkness' in Gaelic, how doe this name fit in with the musical style that you play?
I decided to go with Dorchadas because I knew that I wanted to play dark, atmospheric, black metal, but I also wanted to include some Scottish themes in both the lyrics and song writing. I tried to come up with something in English because I don’t really know much Gaelic, but I couldn’t come up with anything that suited what I was going for, so decided to try some Gaelic translations and eventually came across dorchadas, which felt perfect.
6.Can you tell us a little bit more about the artwork that is presented on the ep cover?
I always come up with the artwork alongside the music cause I want to try and create something that fits the sound. So with this one, as I was going for a more simplistic sound, I thought I should keep the artwork the same. Also I was playing Elden Ring at the time and was using a double flail so that may have influenced it hahaha.
7.With this project you record everything by yourself, are you open to working with other musicians or do you prefer to work solo?
I would absolutely love to work with other musicians, I just enjoy making music in general so it’s always fun trying out different things with different people. If anybody reading this fancies collaborating feel free to hit me up! But I will always keep making solo music also, I love the feeling of starting with nothing and just slowly building on an idea and ending up with a finished song, it’s really cathartic.
8.On a worldwide level how has the reaction been to your music by fans of black metal?
It’s been really great, lots of amazing people reaching out and letting me know what they think of it. The black metal community has been very kind to me as a whole.
9.When can we expect a full length and also where do you see yourself heading into as a musician during the future?
I think the next Dorchadas project I work on will most likely be a full length, the last couple of releases have been EPs so it will be nice to take some time and really flesh out some ideas into a full album. Hopefully I’ll get started on that later on this year. I’m currently working on an unannounced project, that I will hopefully be ready to release in a couple of months, that’s more doom/ethereal influenced, so that’s been fun. Going forward I hope to just keep experimenting and trying out new things, maybe work with other musicians and see where it leads.
10.What are some of the bands or musical styles that have had an influence on your music and also what are you listening to nowadays?
I think for Dorchadas specifically my main influences have been stuff like Leviathan, Ruins of Beverast, Paysage D’Hiver, Lurker of Chalice, pretty much dark atmospheric black metal that has a sort of lo-fi, ritualistic feel to it. As soon as I first heard those bands I knew I wanted to do my own take on that style. Recently I’ve been getting really into Katatonia and Opeth, it took me way too long to realise how great those bands are but I’m making up for it now.
11.What are some of your non musical interests?
I love art, so I spend a lot of my free time drawing, or reading up stuff about artists I like. I like weird horror films and old school RPGs. I also love skateboarding, but I’ve been doing it less and less recently, most because I’m pushing 30 and it takes way longer to recover from slams at this age hahaha.
12.Before we wrap up this interview, do you have any final words or thoughts?
Just wanted to say thanks very much for inviting me to do this interview! It’s the first thing like this that I’ve ever done, it’s been fun and I hope I’ve not rambled about nonsense too much. Cheers!
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