Both accomplished musicians in their own right, Spaniards Nacho Marco and Pau Roca have built an impressive new project together under the name Diamont Dancer. This debut release – Shapes – combines Marco’s electronics with Roca’s indie rock guitar. Call it ambient plus.
Marco is a celebrated DJ and electronic music producer with two decades of credits to his name. A regular at many of the world’s premier nightclubs and festivals, he’s now employed as a product tester for Roland and as a professor at the Berklee College Of Music.
Roca is a hero of Spanish indie rock. His band La Habitación (which translates as The Room) has been a mainstay of that scene for 20 years. In addition to a number of side projects, Roca has also worked as a DJ.
The pair say they studied releases by Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, Daniel Lanois, Steve Reich, Art Of Noise and others ahead of the recording process. Sure enough, you’ll recognize a variety of references back to those artists, depending on the content of your own collection.
But it would be unfair to paint this in a derivative light. Marco and Roca deliver performances that are so fully in-sync that it’s difficult to tell where one starts and the other stops. That, more than anything, is what makes this a uniquely successful recording.
This is less a guitar/synth album than it is a near perfect combination of the two. The effect is spellbinding.