GIOVANNI DI DOMENICO & ORIOL ROCA

Italian piano player Giovanni Di Domenico (Akira Sakata, Nate Wooley, Arve Henriksen, Jim O’Rourke) and Spanish drummer Oriol Roca started playing together twenty years ago. It’s not only friendship what kept them playing through the years in so many different musical situations in the french, belgian and italian jazz improv scene next to Jeroen van Herzeele, Brice Soniano, Manolo Cabras or Alexandra Grimal. They understand music in a very similar way.

An incessant search for new sounds, the joy for exploration combined with an unorthodox musical background brought them together as a duo on 2010, digging into the sound possibilities of their acoustic instruments, density and space, a kind of “live research” on new textures and colors through what it’s mostly improvised music.

Now, after the studio album “Sounds Good” (Spocus, 2012) and the live one “Live in Centelles” (Whataboutmusic, 2015) they bring you Ater, their 2° studio album together. In this new album they focused on minimal touches and slow unfolding structures, fluxes of psychedelic layers superimposed on a mesmerizing drums and cymbals forest.

GIOVANNI DI DOMENICO: piano, fender rhodes, electronics
ORIOL ROCA: drums & percussion

“Frenetic rhythms, spastic melodies, yet oddly tuneful. I’ve been poking around drummer Oriol Roca‘s music for a couple years now, and he always finds a way to gain interest, and pianist Giovanni di Domenico is an excellent foil for Roca on this recording.” Bird Is The Worm (USA)

“Oriol and Giovanni are among those who explore divergence, without forgetting the elements that are typical of the canon and that can be complemented in absolute harmony with them. They do not go on stage with a period costume, but they make music of their time. They are free and have the discipline to be so. They fell on their feet and made us jump. Athletes of the soul.” Carlos Pérez Cruz, El Club de Jazz (Spain)

“Improvisation or composition? Surely a little of both – some stop/go moments are simply too well coordinated to be freely improvised. Pieces are short, delicate, often melancholic without getting sappy. Sounds Good is an unpretentious and quite convincing meeting.” François Couture, Monsieur Délire (Canada)

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