Pachyman with KCRW DJs Jeremy Sole & Tyler Boudreaux

Each Thursday in July, see free live concerts in the Hammer's courtyard! Plus KCRW DJs, happy hour, and extended gallery hours.

PACHYMAN

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.”