Live Review: El Guincho, Donny Benet

The mood was anything but rambunctious in Oxford Art Factory on this Wednesday evening. A small group of dedicated fans and family members came to witness the man behind the mystique, Donny Benet.

Ensnaring us in an '80s post-disco time warp, embalming us in an epoch where flares were flapping and treating us to pre-recorded discordant synth-pop, Benet fixed himself firmly at centre stage. The antics of this seedy harlequin, poster child for Sydney's sarcastic pastiche scene, are much muttered about. Somehow it seemed fitting that he was to play his uniquely cringe-worthy croons, like Working Out and Sophisticated Lover, to a crowd no larger than 40.

The night seemed to take on the aesthetic of a bad acid trip with red lights dripping from the ceiling and the main act El Guincho arriving to the stage after a hefty delay to the caterwauls of the PA system. Several cheers could be heard from the minuscule audience, but they were mainly drowned out in the drab and droning sounds of the band. Out in Australia for a four-show tour supporting his new album HiperAsia this may just be his last trip Down Under with such a lacklustre showing. The joyful melodies of his 2010 album Pop Negro seem to have departed from the performance and there is more reliance now on the fuzzy Auto-Tuned sound and a degradation of the tropicalia he became famous for on his 2008 LP Alegranza. Pablo Diaz-Reixa, the man behind El Guincho, and his three touring companeros, stood statuesque at the front of the stage with little engagement to keep the meagre audience around.

Some international acts gel very well with Australian audiences. They bridge language and cultural gaps with the irrevocable power of their music. El Guincho, unfortunately, is not in this category.