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El Guincho | Pop Negro

World music, or at least the sounds of world music, has been on the conscience of critics and listeners the last couple of years. M.I.A.’s ‘Maya’ most recently came under fire for being devoid of Arulpragasam’s typical worldly shtick. Critics wanted to hear the internationally derived explosion (albeit mostly subject matter-related, since it’d probably be unfair to call sampling The Clash as an example of worldliness) that first made her their darling and eventually led to a mainstream explosion that left shockwaves on music television and radio.

Music critics, an elitist bunch I hear, love anything foreign and tend to fetishize obscure musical quirks from abroad, inadvertently creating a breed of eager DJs and subsequent, just as eager audiences that find their musical taste niche in genres like Nigerian disco or Italo or baile punk. For some reason, worldly-sounding stuff is just generally assumed to be good, innovative, unheard of or just plain interesting.

If that’s the case, El Guincho deserves to be nestled somewhere in between sushi and the World Cup. Two or three years ago, when Pablo Díaz-Reixa first started getting more attention for his tropicalia-infused synth looped arrangements, it was hailed as Animal Collective meets Celia Cruz, Fania All-Stars or whatever worldly, Latin musical act first slipped from the tongue of music writers.

 An apt album name ‘Pop Negro’ is Díaz-Reixa’s third foray into El Guincho territory. Between his critically acclaimed ‘Alegranza!’ and his new album, he began experimenting with noticeably heavier electronic sounds at live shows, almost a sort of industrial, bordering Bauhaus-ish-like sensibilities (as tropical as Peter Murphy can be). It’s not entirely unexpected, though; it would probably be pretty frustrating having people expect you to perpetually perform light, tropical dance music. But where that brief exploration of a darker sound might have been heavy handed, ‘Pop Negro’ has turned out to be a sophisticated evolution from Díaz-Reixa’s unrestrained dance floor explosion to a more measured and nuanced El Guincho of 2010, with shorter, more succinct tracks that whet the appetite for curious new sounds.

Accordingly, it’s curious just how blatantly pop the album is. Ignoring some of the quirks in the first minute or so, the chorus for ‘Soca Del Eclipse’ almost has the framework of a Madonna song. Choice handclaps in the punctuated ‘Muerte Midi’ seal the deal. Barring the Spanish lyrics and lack of auto-tune, ‘(Chica-Oh) Drims’ sounds like the skeleton for a Top 40 R&B smash featuring Drake, R. Kelly or whoever the kids are listening to these days. Meanwhile, ‘Danza Invinto’ keeps a samba/disco beat that’ll make even the smallest head nod or shoulder bob compulsive.

One of the most noticeable evolutions from the first two El Guincho albums is the unobstructed vocal tracks. Where they were muffled and distant in ‘Folias,’ and used in the background, almost as percussive accompaniment in ‘Alegranza!’, ‘Pop Negro’ features a more vocally confident performer who, while certainly not a crooner, successfully keeps each track from treading into repetitive Korg sequences.

‘FM Tan Sexy’ is the last indie hit of late summer 2010, though. It keeps with what we expect of Díaz-Reixa. Luckily, the rest of ‘Pop Negro’ does not.

Originally posted at ChesterSoria.com.