EL GUAPO

Super / System

LP/CD, Dischord

Dischord has been moving strange ways in the last few years. If you, like me, were a fan from the “old times”, i.e. you’d like Rites Of Spring and Dag Nasty and Soulside and so on, then you are having a hard time right now. I have to say that I never really got warm to “Q and not U” but there is something about El Guapo that makes them strangely attractive to the ear. A lot of their artsy-ness reminds me of the efforts of students, who want to pack a lot of meaning and message into their music and that is usually just straining on the listener. If I want that, I won’t search for it on the other side of the globe. There is enough of that just around the corner (as around every corner in the western world). But there is something else which makes El Guapo unique.

First, they produce sounds and atmospheres that are quite unlike most other bands / projects and they use them in different ways. These sounds make you wonder, if what you are hearing are sounds made by the computer or by traditional instruments. Finally you come to the conclusion, that it doesn’t matter. Analog or digital make no difference, because the music matters, your ears are always analogue and I am sure that it is possible to produce sounds just as warm and human with computers as with traditional instruments nowadays.

Second, these sounds and atmospheres are used and structured in their very own special way. Some tracks on “super/system” are nothing more than a few sounds that repeat themselves over and over again. But they would also start with a piece that sounds very much like an easy-listening-tracks from the Sixties, complete with background-choirs, and then change it into a synthie-based syncopated loop that is both simple and complex. The next track would start off like free-jazz played on a children’s harmonica, then turn towards the complex rhythmical intrigue of postrock, break off into children destroying their instruments, only to blend into a flurry of different things and then fade out in one long, slow vibrating organ-sound, very much like fifty percent of records on Kranky (if you remember that label). In-between they’d put danceable tracks – or parts of tracks, I am not so sure – with the attractiveness of old Mouse On Mars-stuff (who are themselves copying off from the Beach Boys). Yes, I am naming names here, but only to show you the strange and wide variety of stuff that is mixed into this unique mixture of pop-sounds and art-compositions.

The record starts off easier and then moves into weirder and weirder terrain as it goes along. So be warned, songs, in the proper sense of the word, as in pop-songs, are found on the first side only (that is, if you like me are still buying records on vinyl). The second side is dominated by musical explorations. They even use music by modern composer Guy Klucevsek in various of their tracks. It is always a good tip, to listen into a record before buying it, and – very important – not only listen to the first few songs. (What I never understood is why people would listen to something like Maxi-CDs by Robbie Williams in a store? I mean, just turn on the radio, you’ve heard it there a dozen times already.)

I’d really like to know, if El Guapo just make up their songs as they go along, or if a lot of planning and thinking is involved in the production-process? Or maybe they record hundreds of hours of sounds they produce while smoking a lot of high-quality-weed and then walk into a studio and blend all these things together in a final mix. As you might have realised, reading around this webpage, at the moment I am looking for hints, where music, modern and progressive music, are heading towards. Will I find new trails on “super/system”? It is definitely a modern and progressive record (I am not using “progressive” in the Seventies-sense of fusion-jazz!) but actually I am under the impression that El Guapo are more into closing the bag of current music, than opening a new one. Basically, using different styles and ideas to create your own music, is re-shaping the status quo, even if you are adding a new accent. Still, this is a very interesting record, to say the least and you will keep on finding new things here (I am just re-listening to it again, and I wondered why they would use 80ies-Synthie-Drums and if that bass-line isn’t ripped off from one of these psychedelic classics from the Sixties?). Maybe I will check out “Q and not U” again.