Puerto Rican born and Los Angeles based Pachy Garcia, better known as Pachyman, is a modern day student of the founders of dub reggae. As a longtime collector of vintage recording gear, Garcia spent years perfecting the style and sound of Jamaican producers like Scientist and Lee "Scratch" Perry in his own home studio.
"I always collected stuff like vintage microphones that I'd find in thrift stores, and then I got a reel-to-reel tape machine and a Tascam 388," he said. "A lot of records I really love were recorded on one of those so I wanted to have my own."
Pachyman recently performed a solo set at this year's Hopscotch Music Festival and will be back in the Triangle this Sunday, performing with a full band at Motorco Music Hall.
Around 2019, Garcia started posting videos of himself on Instagram demonstrating how this music is made. The videos were a hit, and he quickly gained a following.
"I wanted to create little showcases about how dub music used to be made because there was a lack of that online," he told WUNC.
All of the videos originate from his own studio, 333 House, which came to fruition in 2018, the year before his debut album as Pachyman titled "Pachyman In Dub."
Since 2019 he has released five full-length LPs under that moniker. While the first four of those LPs stuck to the classic dub reggae sound, his latest, "Another Place" incorporates some of his other musical influences.
"Many artists go through the thing where you're doing the same thing for years, and you kind of lose the excitement about it you once had," he said. "I started to get bored and I wanted to bring in some of the other influences that I feel make sense with this project. Influences like post-punk and jazz fusion and break beat. Artists like ESG. I feel like that all fits in with the aesthetic of what I've been doing as Pachyman."
Joining Pachyman on Sunday is singer-songwriter and producer MNDSGN and bossa nova musician Gabriel De Rosa.
