Every now and then, a band explodes onto the Melbourne music scene with the kind of creative limitlessness and professional finesse that makes it hard to believe they haven’t been around for decades. dogworld is one of those bands.
Yasmine Hosseini (rhythm guitar), Ella Tinney (drums), Jesse Dowley (bass) and Max Sturm (lead guitar, sampler) made the move from Canberra to Melbourne just six months ago and are already making soundwaves in the scene. “We came to Melbourne with a plan to try and play as many shows as we could,” Max says.
The dogworld bandmates are speaking from their rehearsal space in Brunswick, taking some time out from practice to chat ahead of their EP launch at Yah Yah’s bandroom later that night.
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“It was hard in Canberra because there’s not as many venues,” Yasmine says, noting the beloved Canberra gig space Sideway was often their go-to before it shut down. “It’s exciting, playing lots of new places,” says Ella of bringing dogworld down to Melbourne. “Different types of venues as well,” she adds. “Like, tonight we’re playing a club, which could be fun.”
The band shares a laugh about the unusual reputation the Fitzroy club holds, but their point stands: the wealth of venues in Melbourne brings with it a diversity of fans – fans of which are coming in droves.
Since their initial three singles from 2022, dogworld has seen both an evolution in their sound and the process by which they create it. “I guess the biggest difference is that those early songs, they weren’t really written collaboratively,” Yasmine says. “They were my songs that I brought in, [but] I really wanted to do something collaboratively, which is how the EP came about.”
Despite not knowing each other well when dogworld first formed, Max says the bandmates quickly found common ground. “We all knew we had a similar level of musicality and similar interests in bands,” he says. “At some point, we realised that we’re all open to moving into lots of different genres, making it sort of boundless.”
That thirst to transcend boundaries led the band to spend several days tucked away in a shed in a conservation forested area on Yuin country near Braidwood, hunkered down, “playing pretty much all hours of the day and late into the night”, beginning to build the bones of what would be their debut EP, RANGE.
The title of the release doesn’t lie – these doggies have range. Now, with the writing responsibilities shared among the entire band, their deep collaboration and the sweeping extent of their musical abilities show just how far they can reach when they’re working together. This, Yasmine says, could only come from their willingness to be open with each other.
“It was a bit hard at first, because when you’re improvising you have to be really, really vulnerable, but it meant that we could do really different things,” she says. “A lot of the newer songs we were improvising, or on-the-spot writing, which is now how we do everything. But we had to start with the EP to do that.”
The dogged determination to write the songs came first, then the eloquent artwork by photographer Nikola Jokanovic – from whose book Hotel Yugoslavia the band borrowed images for their EP art – and, finally, the title. “We spent such a long time trying to name the EP,” Yasmine says.
“We had a lot of controversy in the band,” Ella laughs. “But [RANGE] really fit the artwork, and it fits the body of music as well in the way that the songs are so different.”
The immense stretch of the sound spectrum of dogworld’s music, innovating past traditional genres and experimenting with diverse styles, is in part influenced by the band’s taste in music. They reference the creative limitlessness of black midi, the collective collaboration of Black Country, New Road, as well as bands closer to home that they take inspiration from – The Belair Lip Bombs, Shady Nasty, Piggietails and Sour Worm, to name a few.
Speaking to me on the day of RANGE’s release, the band says they’re already working on new material. “We’re always writing,” Max says. “I think we’re pretty keen to jump into another project.”
With an EP and a bunch of shows already under their collars, Yasmine says they’ve got their groove of writing down pat. “We’re hoping we can keep up the momentum,” she says. “What’s most important to us is making music that we’re really proud of and I think we’re heading in that direction.”
As dogworld wraps up speaking to finalise their rehearsal for the gig later that night, the band admits to sometimes feeling the rumble of nerves during their show.
As Yasmine jokes, they get to share the burden of being on stage together. “The privilege of singing and playing together,” she corrects herself, laughing. “I’m keen for tonight,” she adds. “We might even do a little DJ set downstairs later.”
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