After a clandestine and profound excursion through the depths of the Afro-American musical tradition, following his personal preferences and styles through funk, hip hop and jazz to ultimately culminate in his technique, the Mexican bass player Andres Sanchez naturally finds himself in the universe of dub, dancehall and Jamaican reverberation with his solo project Sanchez Dub.
Under this alias, the ex-bass player for the Mexican group Titan has produced a collection of themes that reflect his musical obsessions, having their roots in the “Black Arck” by Lee Scratch Perry, the works of Mad Professor and the minimalist hip hop of Rawkus (Mos Def, Company Flow, RZA). These are but a few of his sources that have culminated in a systematic exercise of jazz composition and his continuous work with local scenes on various projects and groups for almost a decade.
Member of the last generation of the post-alternative scene in the capital city, the national horizon bears important marks of his journey, mostly in the field of funk and electronic music. Since 1996, Sanchez founded the duet “Discoteca Aerobica” with Emilio Acevedo (with whom he would later start the group Titan), which consequently would give way to other electronic groups forming part of the local vanguard. Titan was one of those, with whom Sanchez released the debut album in 1995 “Karate Mix” and part of the second album “Elevator”, edited by Virgin in 1999 when he was no longer involved in the project.
His participation in the group Temporada de Patos with Marcelo Lara and Alvaro Ruiz, his work along side the fake jazz ensemble Waco, his improvisational work in the group Ideal Standard and his recent work with the duet Sanchez & Ruiz are the mosaic of styles and the test of constant activity within Mexico’s advanced independent circuit. This trajectory looks to the Caribbean sound system to expand his roots.
His studies at the Center of Investigation and Musical Studies (CIEM) for over five years, where he studied composition, analysis and musical arrangements, have been complemented by post-graduate jazz workshops, completed in the National Center for the Arts (CAN). Said studies have allowed him to develop his professional activity as an arranger and musical director, as well as his own projects involving other groups, artists or publicity works and commercial assignments.
His collaboration work on the single “Deja Me Conecto” by the Mexican electronic rock group Zoe (Sony), and his surprising deep-house remix as part of the Sanchez & Ruiz project, confirm his capacity as arranger and producer. This talent had been dispersed in dozens of other projects, such as the current B.N. Loco alongside Mexican DJ Uriel Ezquenatzi and Leonardo, part of Zoe.
A test of his jazz imagination can be found in the themes compiled in the anthology Noiselab (“Aguanieve” y “Suite Caleta”) under the heading of Sanchez & Ruiz, along side Alvaro Ruiz, now Ruisort, with whom he recently appeared in the Colombian festival Rock Al Parque, alternating with Fussible from the DJ collective Nortec, and other groups from Latin America.
“Mexican Dub”, perhaps the most authentic exercise of his repertoire up to the present, belongs to the band from the film “Perfume de Violetas” from Mexican director Marissa Sistach. Appearing among other groups from the local independent underground, Sanchez’s theme shines with peculiar brilliance, from its remote tropical echoes and its wavey effects of wah-wah that lead to an indecisive rock-steady crowned by a pristine piano and a few touches of drum n bass. “Mexican Dub” is without a doubt the professional calling card for the “Jamaican” Sanchez and his lo-fi aesthetic.
Currently Sanchez is the producer of Tara, a rapper from the United States. He also works as the musical assessor, sound engineer and audio director for the publicity agency Calabacitas Tiernas in Mexico City, responsible for the recent video of rapper Mos Def filmed in the streets of Habana (Cuba).
In his latest work with Calabacitas Tiernas, Sanchez takes the advantage of his scouting work in order to assess the musical process of the campaigns by Diesel and Furor, in order to collect sources, samples and vernacular sounds from Mexico and Cuba, where videos and images for the 2002 campaign were filmed for these brand-name clothing lines.
Last year, Sanchez set out to visit Jamaica to work with and record local artists and MC’s. The results from tracking the vocalists literally on the streets of Kingston are as astounding as they are profound. These sessions can be heard on Sanchez Dub’s newest material.
With a trajectory that has allowed him to explore his interest for African, Latin and Caribbean musical styles, and with a familiar affinity for electronic rhythms and digital programming since his beginnings as a musician, Andres Sanchez opens an inhospitable route in the Mexican scene with the ancestral chords of dub and the reverberations and delays of Reggae.
It’s a genre that has slowly taken center stage in the music scene the world over, and one of the paradigms of danceable and non-danceable electronic music of the contemporary music culture.
From the country’s beaches to Mexico City’s pavement there comes an hypnotic sound, a rolling repetition with a comfortable organic feeling: the somniferous sound of Sanchez’s Dub bass.
