It’s 2021, time for the Return of Pachyman, 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.

In the early 2000s, Cultura Profética was the dominant force in Puerto Rican reggae, and García was drawn like a moth to the flame. “When their third record came, it was a live one, and it was all over the radio,” said García. He credits Cultura’s song “Tempestad Tranquila,” with its unconventional Moog riff high in the mix, as the one that got him into reggae. From there it was off to a weekly scene called El Patio, in the mountain town of Aguas Buenas, where he cut his teeth listening to and playing with a number of pick up bands.

After moving to LA, García found a niche group called Dub Club and started crate-diving classic records, old microphones and reel to reel tape machines in his quest to achieve an old school reggae sound. “I started recording myself and trying to emulate those old school recordings, filming my recording process and that’s where all the videos stemmed out of,” said García. Both In Dub, released in 2019, and The Return of Pachyman are entirely self-produced albums featuring García on vocals, guitar, drum, bass, and keyboards, with a couple of guest appearances by old friends like Benson Pagán, who currently plays with reggaetón crooner Ozuna’s live band.

The Return of Pachyman is 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. Designed to be a resurrection of sound systems from the past through which we can celebrate a post-Trump future, the record 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, as García tells it, by composing songs “in major keys, which is not as common with reggae nowadays.”