el Guincho

Many of the best live shows I’ve seen have come springing from the unexpected. Sonic Youth’s industrial, iridescent guitar gore blasting out into the Mediterranean at last year’s Primavera Sound and the footage of At the Drive-In confusing Jools Holland, for example, or the time a local drum’n’bass collective ‘invaded’ our local punk night back before pubs and clublands were an option. The latter were swag, obviously, but even then the clumsy chatter of the local MC seemed to carry more fire than the dull dirt of local baggy-trouser bands. While el Guincho wasn’t _so_ out of place at Moshi Moshi’s Hoxton shindig last night, he did take to the stage against a backdrop of wishy-washy whimsy folk – Pablo Diaz-Reixa’s one-man show, then, carrying just the sort of explosive potential needed to pull us from the dull slumber of this DJ set.

Just how he does this I’ll get to later, but what’s immediately striking, even before he’s played a note, is how limited Diaz-Reixa’s onstage setup is. Armed with a floor tom, a closed hi-hat and one four-track sampler about the size of a ham, el Guincho is physically very, very scant but when he begins to ratchet up through the gears and his sound shimmers out into an expansive, glowing tunnel you can see what he means when he says he wants the listener “to find an empty space in the middle” of his music, “for you to get into it”. If debut album _Alegranza at times felt like a blinkered lunge for your gullets, this show drags its tracks out across different dimensions and brilliantly, el Guincho becomes even better live than he is on record.

The set began, I think, with a version of ‘Kalise’, though the way the chants and loops sunk in and out of each other through el Guincho’s half hour means it could have been another song entirely. Whatever, it sounds mighty booming from the speakers and a handful of expectant faces at the front of the hall are gradually joined by an influx of onlookers. Diaz-Reixa adds to the clatter of his drum machine and pre-programmed tracks with his own stick, the need for a snare surrendered as he bashes the poor wood off the rim of the floor tom. Drumstick splintering in the glow of a stage light, I begin to sink out of and away from my surroundings, mesmerised by the wrist of el Guincho as it clatters away at ten times the speed of everything else in the room.

‘Antillas’, ‘Cuando Maravilla Fui’ and a new song that hasn’t got a name yet but will be released through Young Turks at some point in the near future are all torn through, the live incarnation of el Guincho touching on dub and something vaguely recognisable as minimal tech in its travails, clearly developed already since Alegranza was recorded last year. There are down periods, and they’re lush, but for now they mostly just act as wrecking balls; a kid swiping through a toy town it’s taken him no little effort to build. Once the vibrant city’s levelled, the action can begin again, ramped and ramped ‘til dancing and smiling – acts rare to this writer – become Pavlovian, involuntary acts.

Utterly, utterly fantastic.