Rory Noble on his debut EP ‘Where Do We Go When The World Ends’

Rory Noble’s mindset has always been limitless, having worked with some of the biggest artists of our generation as a producer. With production and songwriting credits alongside household names like Kanye West, Ruel and Burna Boy, his talents are revered across the world.

The self-produced debut EP ‘Where Do We Go When The World Ends’ spans the last three years of Rory Noble’s life, and further showcases through stunning vocals, inspirational songwriting and production, that Rory Noble is a man of many talents at peak creative prowess.

Hype: How’s the EP drop going?! They said you had an interview just before this!

Rory: I’ve had 6 interviews!

Hype: Today?

Rory: Yeah (laughs)

Hype: Oh far out, sorry about this one then, you’ve probably talked about it so much! (laughs). So onto the EP, how did you come up with this very deep title ‘Where Do We Go When The World Ends?’

Rory: (laughs) It sounds pretty deep aye. The concept of it was around in 2019 mainly, I was having a lot of dreams of the world ending. I thought the world was ending in the dreams, very apocalyptic. The weird thing about the dreams is they all strung together, and it happened for a very long amount of time, for over a year. I’d have this dream, and the next one would pick up from the last dream - it was really bizarre. And I was aware that it was the next part. I think in the period I was having those dreams, I just thought it might be cool to make some songs around that theme. ‘Where Do We Go When The World Ends’ is a question you could put to literally the world ending, or what it means for someone’s world to end. It can mean so many things. I was talking to my friends about these dreams, like I was talking to Mikey about it. And was the first person that I remember telling about these dreams. When the COVID shit starting happening he was like “yo, your dreams are coming true!”

Hype: Was this pre-COVID you were having these dreams?!

Rory: This is pre-COVID, yeah.

Hype: Nah you predicted COVID for sure (laughs). That makes sense now.

Rory: I feel like during that time, it felt like the world was ending. But now that we look back at it, it’s almost like it never happened. But that COVID time was such an interesting experience. I wish that I could feel that again, especially in those first few weeks going into lockdown. Everyone was on fucking edge, crazily. To go through those set of feeling collectively, maybe it did feel like the world was ending. Now this shit is getting deep (laughs).

Hype: (laughs) Alright, on a less deep note! I’d love to go track by track and chat a little bit about each song. So ‘Headlines’ - this is one of my favourites! I love that it’s super groovy, the harmony is insane, and I love the outro with the strings and vocal effects at the end. Just incredible vocals, production - it’s amazing. What is the concept of this track and how did it come about?

Rory: Dope, thanks! This was like a lockdown song - it was a song about my observation of where my life was at in general. I get frustrated easily being a Libra.

Hype: I’m a Libra too! I’m pretty indecisive

Rory: Yeah, very indecisive but also very ‘see it from both sides’. When you try to see an argument from both sides and both sides are contradicting and don’t really make sense. It’s just a headache. So that song is very much observing what was going around over the last year or two years. If you go into the lyrics of that song, there’s some statements in there that you can really put to anything. I feel like the EP was missing a song like that as well. I think with this song, and with all of the songs, I didn’t think they would be on an EP or the EP. The EP’s got all this other like acoustic-driven, more soft stuff but I like the more aggressive, hard stuff. The main two chords in ‘Headlines’ is a loop that I made 3 or 4 years ago, and I actually made a different song to it. The chords in the first 3 - 5 seconds, the opening chords that go throughout the whole thing. The older song was dark and the same vibe. And I’m a sucker for string outros, I love composing for strings. A few of the songs have violin and string outros.

Hype: Very cool, it just fits perfectly in the song. The next track on the EP is ‘High Again’ - we did chat a lot about this in our last interview so we don’t need to delve into it too much but it’s had over half a million streams on Spotify alone which is pretty insane. How does it feel to have so many people connect to one of your songs?

Rory: True! It’s cool. I’m glad it makes sense (laughs). That’s all you can ask for really, for it to make sense. It obviously has to people so. I’ve still get a lot of comments from people saying that’s their favourite song of theirs. And the video was a whole experience in itself. When I hear the song and I think about the emotional connection I have with the song, I think about the video as well. That was such a cool time.

Hype: Amazing. And ‘What If I Can’t’ is the next track with Mikey Dam - you’ve mentioned before he’s one of your closest mates. I love this gentle, underlying hint of drum & bass within such a beautiful track. What was it like working with Mikey on this?

Rory: Yeah it was just like any other time I guess. If I’m sending him something to jump on or to write to, I already know it’s going to be good when I get it back. With that one, I wrote the song to guitar and piano, and then I had an empty second verse and I sent it to him and said “just do whatever you want”. And then he sent me back his vocals and I was like “yeah fuck this is mean”. I think the drum & bass line just came from trying different drum loops. I just by chance dragged in a garage-y drum & bass loop and that sounded fucking hard. The first version of it was way more hectic, not crazy - it was still chill but the drums were way more punchy. I sent it back to Mike and he was like “nah it’s too intense”. So we just stripped it back again. I don’t know if he was ever a fan at the start of the drum & bass idea.

Hype Medium: It’s very unique, I haven’t heard it done that way in a song before!

Rory: Yeah, but I was like “I like it, so I’m gonna leave it”. And then we just grew to like it. That’s one of my favourite songs I’ve ever written to be honest.

Hype: Yeah, it’s incredible! And the next one on the EP is ‘Team’. This wasn’t only your debut single of the EP but you’re debut single as an artist which you’ve had out for a while now. It really showcases your voice and your production ability as well. How did this song come about?

Rory: I sent ‘Team’ to the Spotify Editorial team when I was pitching a bunch of FiveAM music in Sydney in 2019, and at the end of it I played ‘Team’ and they were like “can you play that again?”. Me and my brother were showing labels some of the stuff we were doing, and everyone wanted to hear ‘Team’ again. That was cool. And the Spotify guys were like ‘you should put this out, and if you do, let us know because we’ll back you’. After that, I showed it to the Warner crew here then we put it out. Spotify did jump on board heavily, like they got it the cover of New Music Friday for a debut song which is a really rare thing to give an artist. So that’s dope.

Hype: Yeah that’s amazing!

Rory: That song was just fucking cool, I still like that song. I hate hearing it though. I hate when motherfuckers just sing it for me. Like that chorus. Yo fuuuck up (laughs). I hate it, but it’s cool.

Hype: (laughs) It’s so cool. It’s so great to have that encouragement from all areas of the industry for your debut single.

Rory: Hard.

Hype: Alright, we’re up to the last song ‘Under The Joshua Tree Stars’! What inspired you to write this track - I’m going to assume you went to Joshua Tree and you were under the stars? (laughs). I’m just gonna take a stab in the dark there.

Rory: (laughs) Well, you’re wrong.

Hype: Really?!

Rory: Nah nah nah (laughs). Yeah this is my favourite song. The whole story around the song is pretty fucked up in a beautiful way. But it was based on a trip that was kind of accidental. If you know the backstory, the song makes way more sense. You don’t need to know the backstory though because the song, you can take it however you want.

Hype: Tell us the backstory then (laughs)

Rory: (laughs) Okay it’s pretty long. So I was in LA in 2019 with Mikey, Ryan and Vinnie, and our friend George was staying in Joshua Tree with his girlfriend and his girlfriend’s family for 3 or 4 days or something. And on one of the last days, George invited us to come out to Joshua Tree. So we were like “let’s go, how are we going to get there?”.

By this time it was like 4 in the afternoon, and we had to drive a few hours. And our mate Vinnie was like “let’s hit up Keisha”, and I was like “who’s Keisha?”. Then he was like “Keisha Castle-Hughes”. And I was like “isn’t that the chick from Whale Rider?” (laughs) and he was like “yeah she’s got a car, she’d probably let us use it”. Anyway, we hire a car because Keisha wasn’t replying, and then as soon as we hired it, she replied “yeah take my car”. So they take the car back, and we go to Keisha Castle-Hughes house (laughs), and get the car.

We got there late at night, and we walk into this ranch and we met George, George’s girlfriend, his girlfriend’s dad and the dad’s fiancee, then the girlfriend’s brother who’s a marine. And they were cool, all of them were really nice and we played Cards Against Humanity (laughs).

The whole thing there with Joshua Tree is being out in the quiet desert and the stars that you see in the desert are world-famous. I didn’t know this either. And when we go outside, I was speechless aye. It was a whole other level. Then the brother who’s a marine was like “what do you do?!” and I honestly couldn’t say anything. I’ve never felt like I’ve actually ever been speechless. I was like “bro, I’m just tripping. This is the craziest shit I’ve ever seen”. There’s something about it that was just weird, and we just stayed up and watched the stars.

Then a few hours later, George was telling us how there’s this flower that grows out of a cactus and only blooms one night a year (Night-blooming cereus), and it was on the night that we were there. So we went to watch it come out. It was crazy. So in the song, there’s a line where I say “there’s a flower that blooms for one night a year”. If you didn’t know the backstory, you’d probably be like “what the fuck does that mean?” (laughs). But yeah, we just lay under the stars and it was so bright. You could see meteor showers, you could see shooting stars. Then you could hear coyotes in the distance fighting and howling. It was very surreal.

When I came home, I wanted to write a song about it but I just didn’t know how to. I went to my studio in Parachute and had lunch, and Ben Malone was standing out there. I told him the Joshua Tree story and he loved it. I was like “I’m trying to write a song about the Joshua Tree story but I can’t crack it. I want to but I’m fucking getting nowhere, I’ve been trying for a few days.” And he was just like “let’s go write it then”. It was because of him - he got it going and then helped write the whole thing. Props to Ben.

Hype: Wowww. Yeah, it’s nice for you to be able to share your story with someone who has the technical capabilities to take that story and put it into music.

Rory: Yeah, now I think about it, that’s what I do for other people. And that’s what Ben does for me. That’s a great way to look at it. It’s so true. Yeah he was really powerhousing it to help me get everything out and contributed in such a cool way. We have very similar writing styles and how we approach things from a writing point are the same. I love that song too.

Hype: Yeah, it’s a great way to finish the EP and now I’m going to have to listen to it again with this story in mind!

Rory: Yeah everything’s there. 

THANK YOU SO MUCH RORY! MAKE SURE YOU KEEP UP WITH HIM ON INSTAGRAM, FACEBOOK, SPOTIFY OR APPLE MUSIC.