Pachyman

Before Pachy Garcia could expand on the dub he loved and made as Pachyman, he knew he first needed to master it. That is precisely what Garcia did on his first four albums as Pachyman, beginning with his 2019 debut for Permanent Records, aptly titled In Dub. Garcia perfectly embodied the spirit and sonics of Channel One, from the guitar that repeated and faded like a transmission from a distant planet to the keyboards that sounded as if their signal had been strangled by audio cables. Drums echoed infinitely, and the bass vibrated with pure tone. The album’s spryest song was even called “Bring the Herb.” But dub, of course, was only one of Garica’s musical interests. In his native Puerto Rico, he’d studied piano in college and started what he calls a “post-rock experimental instrumental band”; in Los Angeles, to which he moved at 26, he co-founded the glorious noise-pop trio Prettiest Eyes, where he learned to play the drums that soon became central to Pachyman. How could he bring all that to bear with Pachyman?

The answers began to emerge on 2025’s Another Place, an exploratory record where Pachyman pulls assorted strands of psychedelia, funk, and even post-punk into his dub universe. With its rapid-fire drums and squiggly riff, “Strikes Back!” feels like a prime demo Kevin Parker accidentally cut from an early Tame Impala record; with its trebly guitar and chanted vocals, “Hard to Part” suggests a lost track from Come Away with ESG. “Berlin” appropriately drifts toward the space of the Berlin School. Still, the core of Pachyman’s sound remains a deep dub reverence that he’s increasingly allowing to move into other places, places where the disparate sounds he’s loved and absorbed come out to play, too.