El Guincho took the stage at Nectar a little late last night, after a pretty prolonged setup for an act that's basically just two mics, a drum pad, and a keyboard. They explained that there was some problem with the monitors, and then they got going, sounding just fine, one guy tapping out percussion on the drum pad, main man Pablo Díaz-Reixa singing chants and playing melodic percussive sounds (think thumb pianos and the like) on his keyboard. It seemed like things were going smoothly, but after the second song, Díaz-Reixa said, "I'm sorry, I think we have to stop to play, because of the monitors." (a native of the Canary Islands, he speaks with a charming Spanish accent.) "Will you wait for us to fix it?" The crowd cheered their support and stuck around and a few minutes later, El Guincho was back on course. They decided to replay their second song, and it sounded pretty much exactly the same, although presumably they had a better mix in the monitors.

Anyway, El Guincho kept things moving, their heads bobbing frantically up and down, and they got more dancing and clapping along (in time even!) out of a Seattle crowd on a Monday night than I can remember seeing, like, ever. There was tropicalia, there was afrobeat, there was beach pop, all smeared through reverb and delay and tied to alternately thumping 4/4 and syncopated beats. At one point, Díaz-Reixa asked the crowd if they liked soca, although if the next song was more soca than others, it was pretty hard to pick out from El Guincho's thoroughly blended sound. At another point, Díaz-Reixa gave a shout out to Wall of Sound, noting that he was pleased to see a record store with a whole section dedicated to the music of islands, a section which he said he'd totally bought out, encouraging the crowd to peruse it once WoS had had time to restock; then he said they were going to play some island music. El Guincho had sold out of their records on this tour, but they gave away their last six CDs.

Díaz-Reixa talked about how he had a Seattle Sonics jersey as a kid, and how, because of the Space Needle, he had always imagined that Seattle was this totally futurist city. Then he said, "This song's about dolphins." For the final song before their encore (a reprise of "Palmitos Park"), Díaz-Reixa said, "This song's about weddings, when you meet a girl, and you start to think about all that kind of shit." True to that introduction, the song was both romantic and raucous, dreamy and festive, like most pretty much all of their songs, a strange but totally pleasant synthesis.

I've seen Copy (aka Marius Libman) play many times before, and even though his show doesn't vary much from one performance to another—much of the elements of his songs are triggered from a laptop—I never get tired of it. Mostly, I think it's just because I'm a total sucker for Libman's sound: big compressed drum machine beats, thick buzzing bass tones, and lattices of catchy multi-octave synth melodies. They keytar certainly doesn't hurt either, even if most of the time it looks like Libman's just playing the relatively simple three or four note bass parts, it's still a great look. So, yeah, I will watch gladly get down to Copy every time he rolls through town.

Sometimes the DJ at borderline "rock" shows can be a bit of a throwaway (I speak from culpability), but never so with DJ Kid Hops. For one thing, the guy just switches styles and tempos with such omnivorous taste and skill that there's never a moment to get too complacent. One minute it's drum and bass, the next it's dub or afrobeat, and the next it's M.I.A. or that (as always killer) Soulwax remix of "Kids" by MGMT. This all could seem schizophrenic or jarring, but Hops knows what he's doing, and he finds blends and transitions that make the variety work. Someone should put this guy on the radio or something.