Piratas De Sudamerica

When El Guincho's Alegranza! got widespread release from XL at the end of 2008, the easiest indie-world album to compare it to was Panda Bear's Person Pitch. Both were joyous, airy records that sounded communal but were actually made by guys alone at their computers-- Person Pitch by Animal Collective's Noah Lennox, Alegranza! by a twentysomething Barcelonan named Pablo Díaz-Reixa. The albums didn't just convey the discrete parts of each track, they conveyed an imaginary atmosphere that the tracks took place in, and in that sense were instances of bedroom musicians using modern technology to evoke primal comforts-- to conjure their tribe just by multi-tracking.

Pablo Díaz-Reixa, a.k.a. El Gunicho, is Spain’s musical ambassador. Last year, the Spanish cultural attaché arranged his tour through Ghana, performing shows with local MCs. Sounds like rather rash governmental policy, but what better way to get the kids down with Spanish culture? El Guincho updates traditionalism, hauling Spanish and Latin Folk into a modern age via a series of silky Caribbean samples. Yet despite wearing his influences with pride, the man doesn’t emit so much as a whiff of plagiarism.