Pachyman is here to take you on a journey. Bending sound into atmosphere and memory, his fourth and latest album Another Place released via ATO Records earlier this year. The music is transportive, conjuring good old days gone by with its dub reggae roots and wandering synth-pop elements. Pachyman (aka Pachy García)  began touring (a co-headliner with psychedelic artist MNDSGN) this September, and the pair are set to close out their run at the Lodge Room in Los Angeles this weekend. The pair’s collaboration spans further than just the tour—MNDSGN and Pachyman released a remix of Another Place’s opening track “Calor Ahora,” electrifying the lax track into a sultry dance beat. After their joint run, Pachyman will headline two shows in December: one in Puerto Rico, his birthplace, and another in Miami.

But nostalgia, for Pachyman, isn’t about imitation—it’s about translation. Another Place is something new entirely. In the making of the record, the LA-based musician disappeared, as he does every winter, to the legendary Channel One Studios in Kingston, Jamaica, to record the album in a state of analog comfort and warmth. Within those walls, warmth hums through every reverb tail and bass line, each track steeped in the intimacy of tape hiss and humid air. The result is a record that evokes summer sunlight filtered through palm leaves, rhythmic, radiant, and fully alive.

Now, the album has taken the stage to great success. On the joyful track “In Love,” he introduced a quartet that he’s taken on tour this fall, the collaborative energy seeping through earbuds and loudspeakers alike. Though brought about by wide-ranging influences (Yellow Magic Orchestra, William Onyeabor, Berlin techno) and jam-session collaborations, Pachyman’s emotional voice and introspective quality on this record are singular. Many of his lyrics and ideas spawn from diary entries, revisited after ample reflection.

For Pachyman, music is both home and horizon—a place to return to, and a place to keep exploring. As winter creeps back into Los Angeles, Pachyman’s tour is here to bring the warmth. Pachyman’s tour offers passage to another place—one where time stretches, warmth lingers, and rhythm is a kind of memory.

You journal often, and you’ve said, “Calor Ahora” came out of a journal entry. What’s something you’ve written down recently that surprised you when you read it back?
Sometimes I’ve gone full stream of consciousness and I’ve found passages that could be great songs, but have never known how to actually make them into songs. Finding the “Calor Ahora” entry ruled ‘cause it was so short and to the point that it just made sense into a song.

Every winter, you’re drawn back to the ghost of Channel One Studios. What is it about that sound that haunts you—and is there a specific element you find yourself chasing again and again?
I think it’s more of a warm embrace by sound. Like walking into a room with that music on and it’s instantly a vibe. Throwing on something from that era on the stereo immediately eases the soul. It’s a difficult feeling to describe but it’s definitely comforting. That comforting sound during winter is all I need and I get drawn to creating it over and over.

Another Place feels like an album that both invites and resists categorization. What role did dissonance play in shaping the record?
Both sounds co-exist and give value to each other. The ethereal sound of my last record pushed me into bringing back some dissonance to balance it out. It felt like a very honest moment in my life. The state of the world also continuously pushes me to keep creating music; in a way it can be a sort of therapy but it’s also one of the many things we can do as artists to overcome. 

The album draws from strange corners of dub, synth-pop, and minimal techno. With so many different sounds feeding into the record, did you ever feel pulled in too many directions? Or was the plan always to let those influences melt into something uniquely yours?
It was always something that I knew was going to happen and I didn’t fight it. I love a lot of different genres, as do many of us, but I’ve also played many different roles in bands that have been quite different from this project. Those experiences shaped me into who I am and they were going to spill into this project eventually. Sometimes I thought that too many directions might be too much for the people that listen to my music, but then I caught myself being influenced by what I thought other people would think, and that is a path that I knew I was never going to lead myself into. I’m a firm believer that all these different musical ideas can co-exist in harmony. 

You’re introducing a live quartet on tour, making this your most collaborative project to date. How has playing with others influenced your sound or your sense of creative control?
I’ve always been very controlling about my sound so I knew that I needed to let go a bit of that when I was putting this band together. I ultimately have creative control over all my music and I will always put out records that I’m happy with. The live version of the band doesn’t necessarily have to be an exact replica of the record, it can be its own thing. It’s a huge undertaking to try and replicate music that is completely based on studio tricks so I needed to be less hard on myself and let it be what it is live. That being said, playing with these guys has been so refreshing and fun. It’s great to hear what other things they can do with the music. 

So much of dub is negative space. As someone who journals, loops, and records alone–what does absence mean to you? How do you relate to silence, stillness, or the act of slowing down?
It’s island music. Music from a place that thrives on the slow pace. I grew up on an island so that’s my element. Living in a metropolis can be a contrast to that but silence and stillness are the roots for peace. That’s the mood that I strive to be in even though I’m living in the fast lane with this project, with all the touring and recording. I sometimes have to remind myself who I am or where I came from in order to ground myself. I never want to forget that feeling because that’s what brought me to be an artist in the first place.

The title Another Place feels both literal and metaphorical. What does that “other place” look or feel like for you now, as a musician and as a person moving through the world?
That other can be a safe-space. A place to be true to yourself or vulnerable and safe.

Photographed by Ian Morrison

Written by Abby Shewmaker