Dbldbl Returns with ‘Hotcakes’

Dbldbl is the musical project of Liam Dargaville (Te Rarawa, Ngā Puhi, they/them), a musician and songwriter from Tāmaki Makaurau who is now based in Bangkok, Thailand.

Dargaville has had a long lasting influence on Aotearoa’s alternative hip hop landscape. Since their first forays in 2013 as one half of Cool Tan (formerly known as Heavy) Liam hasn’t been far from a stage, performing house parties & dive bars as well as appearances at Auckland City Limits, St Jerome’s Laneway Festival, Splore, Chronophonium, Welcome To Nowhere and their legendary Lagoon Stage set 2024 Camp A Low Hum. Dargaville’s playful command over a crowd has seen them support international talent such as Earl Sweatshirt, The Internet, Jurassic 5, Ratatat, Miss Blanks and Le1f. Teaming up with Sunreturn in 2021 Dbldbl went on a run of collaborations with Aotearoa’s finest alternative hip hop / RnB talent (Big Mike feat. L V J & PollyHill, Lemon Drop feat. Imugi 이무기 and Fakey feat. Randa).

After some much deserved down time Dbldbl is back to serve us up Hotcakes, a brand new single that comes with a side of music video made by the award winning papercraft animator Ross Ozarka (Kea Kids News – Luke Nola and Friends) with assistance from NZ on Air Music.

Hotcakes piles on a wobbly synth loop (provided by BJ Leo) before layering on (chip) butty bass, crisp snares hits and crunchy hi hats. Dazed Casio lead lines, and mumbled vocal hooks give way to bars triple stuffed with symbolism, metaphors and references to local celebs (“The people’s champion Chlöe Swarbrick, my childhood hero Ché-Fu, best rapper in the world L V J aka Zeus Dupree, Eight Buffet at the Cordis (FKA Langham Hotel), and of course TradeMe”). Mid way through Hotcakes turns heel, twisting vocal chops and tutū-ing with boom bap rhythms acting as a roux for a vocal delivery that runs it back to Dargaville’s time in the mid 2010’s where they were a mainstay of house parties & D.I.T festival stages.

“The seed for this track was planted during the throes of lockdown when everyone was losing the plot and chronically online,” half jokes Liam. “The virtual air seemed thicker than ever before and hot takes from the mundane to the absurd were flying around pretty willy-nilly. The second half of Hotcakes paints a whimsical image of my own personal flavour of ‘losing my mind’ during that time. It both seems trivial and like a fever-dream thinking back to it.”

“I’m surprised I don’t hate it after this long. Luckily I’m a haututū (the playful, curious and tunkering kind). So it’s actually a hell of a lot different from where it began. Thematically, and unfortunately, it’s more relevant than ever. If anything I’m glad it took some time to get out the gate. Otherwise, I might not have gone the animated route, an’ I couldn’t picture it looking any other way. Ross really nailed the brief on this one. Go hire him!”

Hotcakes is accompanied with a music video made by award winning papercraft animator Ross Ozarka and made with assistance from NZ on Air Music. Colourful, tactile and handmade Hotcakes is undoubtedly homegrown while being influenced by Japanese stop-motion and French animated music videos.

“I’ve never made a music video before” confesses Ross. “Liam put out a call on social media seeking an animator to make a music video. A friend forwarded it to me, and I jumped at the opportunity.”

“Initially, I was only thinking about how the song had a dreamy feel to it and it wasn’t until I got on a call with Liam that I understood what the project was about: a chronicle of Liam’s descent into social media’s heart of darkness. I think we all have a complicated relationship with social media, and the song’s central idea of comparing Hot Takes to Hotcakes, a yummy food that is nutritionally sparse, easy to overeat, and often leaves us feeling sick to our stomachs, was an elegant and fun way of approaching the topic without making a ‘we live in a society’ statement.”

“I make all of my artwork out of hand-painted cut paper, which I animate in stop motion in front of a camera. The imagery in the music video is dense and fast-paced, so I got my hands on a vinyl cutting machine. From there, I painted everything and somewhere along the way I had the idea that the animated imagery should come together, do its thing, then break apart just as the next animation is coming in. This made editing the music video ten times harder, but it ties the disparate imagery together with the same animation idea, and makes the video feel even faster-paced.”

“I love all the kiwi references: Ché-Fu, the Trade Me kiwi, and of course Chlöe Swarbrick dancing. The second half of the video is my absolute favourite, the colour scheme is cool, the animation is slick, it has the best ideas, and it’s my favourite part of the song. Everything came together nicely.”

With Hotcakes‘ delivery now fulfilled Liam is looking to the future: “With an attention span that jumps between all and nothing, mixed with a new found obsession for mixed media animation (Tāua Tāua) – the future holds much shorter tracks (we had it right with Heavy) but with very pretty yet painstaking visuals. Ease meets being a punisher.

Hotcakes is available now on YouTube, Bandcamp and all good streaming platforms.