Pachyman with KCRW DJs Jeremy Sole & Tyler Boudreaux

RSVP

July 14 with KCRW DJs Jeremy Sole & Tyler Boudreaux

Pachyman is Puerto Rico’s emerging master of rub-a-dub style. The Caribbean island’s paradisiacal lure as a mecca of Afro-Caribbean music is usually expressed through upbeat genres like salsa and reggaetón, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a place for skanking guitars and echoing fat beats, conjuring up massive walls of sound. As a young, university-trained musician looking to find his way in this tropical space, Pachy García (a/k/a Pachyman) became obsessed with old Jamaican dub records like the ones from King Tubby and Scientist and is determined to re-create the vibe in his own way. His latest recording, The Return of Pachyman, breaks reggae music down to its bare bones. A supernatural force from a brave new world that’s a little bit San Juan, a little L.A., and a whole lot of Channel One in Kingston, Jamaica, the album shows that blasting off into reggae’s deep space has never gone out of style. It’s a high-flying journey into a different kind of dub vibe. With The Return of Pachyman, García wants to show how the Caribbean flow is transnational, a vibe that resounds from Jamaica to San Juan to Southern California. "With this project, I was looking to make positive music and radiate good energy; something to kinda disconnect from the negative things that were happening at the moment . . . I am trying to make this project a service for humanity in the sense that I just wanted to shine a positive light.”

Copresented with KCRW