El Guincho’s an island treasure
Words Samuel Strang
Knitting Tropicália, space-age pop and calypso together, El Guincho’s Alegranza is one glorious patchwork piece. Bossa nova cadence and psychedelic lunacy wash up against each other to create captivating reference points; a chaotic collage as enchanting as it is exhausting.
El Guincho is 24-year-old Canary Islander Pablo Díaz-Reixa, who, having spent the last few years contributing to Barcelonan outfit Coconot’s maddened Animal Collective-esque procession, decided to go it alone after envisaging an archipelago idyll of his own. “I actually started writing material for Alegranza a long time ago,” he says, “but I didn’t know it would end up as part of the record. What I really wanted to do was study musicology and research islands’ music.”
Though Díaz-Reixa never ended up at university, his debut record seems a decent stab at independent analysis. Envisioned off the Catalonian coast, Alegranza is reminiscent of the mesmeric carnival march Animal Collective’s Panda Bear led us on last year with Person Pitch. You hear the same chattering drums and infectious Jackanory-rhyme harmonies riding high above the underlying mayhem.
But Díaz-Reixa is keen to indicate that the reference points shared with Person Pitch were the obvious ones for Alegranza to have drawn, rather than a mere numbskulled imitation. He grew up surrounded by Latin, African and Spanish influences, and that made it difficult for him to involve himself with the usual indie mainstay. “It was really hard to find a Pavement record in Gran Canaria,” he says. “Almost everyday I listened to Los Gofiones, whether I liked it or not.”
Though he admits to being inspired by fifties exotica artists like Martin Denny, Díaz-Reixa insists that the key informant for Alegranza was J Dilla’s deathbed masterpiece Donuts. He used similar sampling techniques to the infamous Detroit producer, layering syncopated drum loops over the original tracks to breathe a new life into lost tapes of archive material from across the globe.
El Guincho was recently heralded with the rest of Europe’s prize cattle at SXSW, only to be asked what part of Mexico Spain was in. Simultaneously, Beggars imprint XL decided that Alegranza deserved a proper release, following its limited circulation earlier this year. With that and various festival appearances lined up for the summer, one would assume that El Guincho’s profile is bound to rise as all clamber to dance to his hypnotic beat. However, removed from the usual fanfare, he seems sure to remain suitably set adrift as an exotic treasure. World music, in the truest sense.
