Daniel Dor is a Jaffa based singer-songwriter and musician who has been creating music on and off for the past 30 years. He began singing, writing, and creating albums later in life. He started playing nylon stringed guitar at age 10, flamenco, classical and pop songs, before changing to electric at the age of 14 when he began playing blues and creating his first punk band later experimenting with grunge. In high school he studied jazz, learning about Beatles, Zappa, Zeppelin, and whatever the kids at school were listening to. During his extended army service, he joined a band that infused a 70’s rock sound. Around this time he dived into American folk, and country music.
But it’s his love for music as a listener that inspires him to make music with the understanding of the power of music to affect emotions and state of mind, and music performers around him whom he adored. “The urge to express, evolve, and heal,” Daniel Dor comments on what drives him forward as an artist.
Most of Daniel Dor’s songs are touching aspects of self healing, human psyche, love, and some are more adventurous. He would love people to be inspired to inquire into themselves through his music. His songwriting process varies from one period to another; sometimes he gets a sentence and then the song evolves out of it. Other times, he jams with himself and finds an interesting musical part to continue working on. And there’s times when a song appears all at once.
Daniel Dor’s music influences range from Dylan to Miles Davis, Neil Young, Beatles, Robert Wyatt, Pixies, Queen, Jose Gonzales, Springsteen, but mostly musicians he met and worked with through the years; Oren Lavie, Nessi Gomez, Shye Ben Tzur. And some that never released materials: Dim Shleifman, the Leibovich Family and many more. . .
Daniel Dor’s music catalog consists of one full-length album, one extended-play, and a few singles. The full-length, Positive Rock, produced by Nadav Barak and Joseph Eshine, was created by a trio he toured with for three years, Tal Markus on Bass and Nimrod Lieberman on drums. Leaving Circumstances, his EP, was recorded and produced by himself at home with talented musicians like Gedi Ronen, Dim Shleifman, Shlomi Mantzur, and Gadi Peter. In-between this, he released singles taken from a live show in Jaffa in which featured Shye Ben Tzur on Bansuri flute. In 2016, he created The Songman Project and released two singles of it. The project was basically based on himself spending time with Palestinian peace activists and translating their messages into songs.
Daniel Dor's ‘Leaving Circumstances’ track is accompanied by a volumetric video with visuals resulting from live performances while being surrounded by 60 InfraRed cameras of a cooperation with Digital Nation Entertainment (previously worked with worked with U2, and Radiohead) in Los Angeles, a company that specializes at transferring the physical world to the digital world. The video can be watched on a phone's camera through this link. If you connect this link to your camera, place the hologram on a flat surface and move it around while the video is on.
Closing out the interview, when asked what 2022 holds in store for him, Daniel Dor responded, “2022 stores the release of a new EP I have created together with Tal Markus as a producer. The EP was recorded in Tel Aviv, Costa Rica, Berlin, and Istanbul.” The EP’s style ranges from cabaret to psychedelic spacy atmosphere mostly through piano songs. “Hopefully it will receive a fair amount of attention that will justify touring a bit more.”
Check out the EP, Leaving Circumstances, here.
Photo credit: Liron Shua
Check Daniel Dor out: Instagram, Facebook, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, Apple Music
Words by Danielle Holian