Barcelona-based Canary Islander El Guincho – aka Pablo Diaz-Reixa – releases his debut, a trippy and exotic mingling of Spanish folk song, African rhythms and psychedelic beats. Would you class it as ‘world’ music? These days anything that isn’t sung in English gets labelled ‘world’ and therefore ‘special interest’, therefore becoming the territory of Sting fans or an instantly-forgettable 3 minute slot on Later With Jools Holland. This, thankfully, isn’t that sort of world music.
El Guincho is a guy who works alone, meticulously sampling, mixing and layering sounds to create something new and different. In a time where some people think that frat boy rip-off merchants Vampire Weekend sound exotic, El Guincho’s trippy tropicana would probably make their heads explode. Laden with hypnotically repetitive percussion, Spanish islander chanting and afrobeats, ‘Alegranza’ is pure sunshine for the ears with a vintage rock n’ roll feel to it.
OK, so most people won’t understand a word that’s sung, and most songs don’t have structure or sections – just long tropical psychedelic trip outs – but listening to this when there’s six inches of snow outside like I am will make you feel good!
Check out more tropical dance from the space-age Spaniard at www.myspace.com/elguincho