On: El Guincho

We recently chatted to Pablo Díaz-Reixa AKA El Guincho AKA the One-Man Tropical Rave Machine about how he manages to make music that’s wilder than his crazy hair. He explained that while his album might sound like Mardi Gras on Fun Island it’s actually kind of depressing. Here he explains Palmitos Park to those of us who no hablo español.

“People are always telling me ‘oh, your record is really funny’, you know, it’s like a summer pop thing, but for me some of the songs are really dark. It was made at a moment in my life when I was going through changes and in a really bad mood. I used to work in a recording studio and I wasn’t very happy. I was working 16 or 18 hours a day. Really hectic. So the lyrics were a reaction. That’s why the songwriting is so simple. It was a really naive reaction to what was happening in my life. Palmitos Park is a wildlife park in Gran Canaria that I grew up near. I remember when I was a kid going there and seeing a crocodile in this really small place with this really yellow water. I thought, wow, this animal is really trapped. Later, I was feeling like that in my life, really trapped in my work, so that’s what the song is about. A while ago they had to close the place. There was a really huge fire and all the animals just run away.”

01.04.08.