A feature article I wrote on Spanish musician El Guincho is in the current issue of Fader magazine – look for Aaliyah gracing the cover.
It’s downloadable (Fader 54 – PDF, my piece starts on page 57), but I encourage you to seek out the print version, as your computer monitor can’t do justice to the photography therein…
Shout to D.Watts, our Canary Islands pointman, who tipped me off about the Guinch waaay before everybody, and hats off to Fader familia, who gave me the go-ahead to write a (lengthy) piece on him well before the interwebs hype (or XL signing!!) happened.
& then there’s Aaliyah.. aah! We breathe a collective sigh.
Wow! Great article, Jace. I think that ‘Alegranza’ is probably the easiest record to like thats come out within the last 6 months – something about the Martin Denny/Avalanches/Trinidad calypso mesh makes it kind of immune to bad feeling.
Was thinking about El Guincho recently in comparison with Swedish artist Jens Lekman and how they both use samples a lot, but aren’t particularly inventive samplers – the samples they use are shorthand for memories or atmospheres, rather than kickass loops in service to the beat. And both have made some of my favourite pop music of the last year.
Also, damn, I miss Aaliyah.