El Guincho - Pop Negro

El Guincho
Pop Negro

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Since the release of his jubilant second album Alegranza! back in 2008, Barcelona-based synth’n’sample artist El Guincho (AKA Pablo Díaz-Reixa) has developed a reputation for producing breezy, sun drenched pop mélanges. He blends dozens of influences from the spectrum of Latin American music, fused with psychedelic indie. Atlas Sound (the solo project of Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox) or even Ariel Pink are relevant touchstones, in that all mine the back catalogue of their choice, reconstructing cherry-picked vintage sounds in utterly original ways.

Often citing the folk songs taught to him by his Canary Islander grandmother as a formative inspiration, El Guincho laid some of these influences bare on his recent Piratas de Sudamerica EP – a collection of early 20th century Latin American pop and folk covers rendered in an effects-laden creole. But Pop Negro is a different animal altogether. Tropicalia, afrobeat and dub are blended with production techniques directly borrowed from 80s and 90s dance – specifically, the work of chaps like Rhett Davies (Bryan Ferry, Luther Vandross) and Babyface (Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey).

To a certain extent, Díaz-Reixa is doing for ‘the golden era of recordings’ what Ariel Pink has done with 80s radio schlock, utilising the expansive sound and gleaming finish of the pop of the last few decades in the pursuit of some heretofore un-thought-of hybrid which critiques as it celebrates. That said, it doesn’t pay to intellectualise this album too much.


Above all, Pop Negro provides a half hour of effortlessly expansive pop ecstasy, guaranteed to get any party started.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 382, October 4th 2010