After several years of commendable mixtapes and punchy tech-house tracks, between the humor of ‘Gominola’ and the darkness of ‘Positif Siempre’, the Granada-born Chico Blanco seeks the eternal summer. His official debut with Marea, his own label-collective, presents itself as a “dance-pop fantasy suspended between memory and imagination,” tied to a sound decidedly dreamlike and summery, “between Berlin, an imagined Ibiza, and a Mediterranean sensibility.”
The Granada-born Pablo Cobo acknowledges that “I have romanticized moments I never lived as a form of escape… perhaps because the infinite possibilities of the present are almost paralyzing.” He may be referring to the glory days of Amnesia, the famous Ibiza nightclub, to pre-internet hedonism in general, or to the 1980s of the German band Software, whose approach seems to inform both some sonic elements and the album’s graphical aspect.
In any case, Chico Blanco achieves a very focused and cohesive sound, exploring the intersection between dance and dreaminess. Locomía’s theatrical vocals seem to influence the Balearic-Latin groove of “Baila,” with that simple yet authoritative “pues baila” line; also in the “la gente está muy loca” of “Omaigach” or, above all, in “Gira gira,” sprinkled with hyperpop details. But Chico Blanco always makes everything sound like a distant, beautiful memory. The album title is not accidental.
‘Amnesia’ rests on a concept of imagined nostalgia, to the point of brushing against vaporwave. The female whisper in ‘Feel Me’ (“you are listening to Amnesia”), together with its bubbly rhythms, its unstoppable pulsing house, and its watery effects, creates a superb recreation of the 90s. Above all, the summery, beachy atmosphere is highly immersive, just like the gusts of air that sway ‘Paradis’, stretched to about six hypnotic minutes.
‘Special Place’ is the crown jewel thanks to its Afro-Caribbean-inspired piano chords and Regularfantasy’s vocal melody. But before that, Chico Blanco threads ‘Amnesia’ together in several ways: not only slowing the tempo with chill-out cuts like ‘Olvidancing’ (great title), but also opening and closing the album with an intro and an outro that first lead us toward that beautiful sunset and, at the end, leave us gently rocking in the sea.
