mfw my partner's brother drowned an ebike last week and It Is Not Happening To Me

A deeper look at Antonio Sanchez: Bad Hombre (CamJazz, 2017)

Antonio Sanchez: drums; keyboards; voice; electronics.  Voice on “Bad Hombre Intro”: Ignacio Lopez Tarso

Drummer Antonio Sanchez has been a major voice on the jazz scene since 1997 when pianist Danilo Perez brought him to national prominence.  His stock rose considerably when joining guitarist Pat Metheny in 2001 replacing Paul Wertico, joining the Pat Metheny Group for the recording “Speaking Of Now” (Metheny Group Productions/Warner Brothers, 2002) and he has remained with the guitarist for over a decade, being the drummer of choice on all of Metheny's projects.  2007 saw Sanchez' career as a leader for Italian based CamJazz begin and starting with “Migration” a decidedly blowing based date featuring Chick Corea, Chris Potter, David Sanchez, and Metheny.  The following year's “Live in New York At Jazz Standard” was a quartet date with David Sanchez, Miguel Zenon, and Scott Colley featuring elongated, definitive takes on tunes featured on the drummer's debut along with a few new tunes. 2013's “New Life”, the first to feature Sanchez' group Migration signalled a point of evolution in that there was a heavier emphasis on composition.  While memorable compositions have always been a part of Sanchez' oeuvre as an artist, 2015's “Three Times Three”, like the first two albums, more a blowing record in execution had a enhanced degree of compositional awareness,growing from “New Life”. This awareness was exploited completely on “The Meridian Suite”, Migration's second album, and like the Pat Metheny Group's final opus “The Way Up” (Metheny Group Productions/Nonesuch, 2005) was an album length suite.  For Sanchez' sixth album “Bad Hombre”, he goes into territory first mined on the soundtrack to Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's epic, acclaimed film, “Birdman” (2014) and expands it even further into a truly personal statement, politically and socially.  

Sanchez has always been conscious not to make drummer's records, even with the  heavy emphasis on improvisation in the earlier albums mentioned above, a compositional construct was always found.  Here, that idea is taken even further by means of solo drums and electronics, crafted from hours spent in Sanchez' basement recording studio The Lab at his Jackson Heights, NY home. The traditional recording studio limits time for experimentation, and inspired from electronic music the drummer listened to from favorite groups like Haitus Kayote, Little Dragon, Aphex Twin, and Boards Of Canada, he used the nearly infinite time of his home studio to piece together segments of drum improvisations with intriguing electronic backdrops.  The added timbres aren't just backdrops for drums, but also frame the ideas the direction the improvisations go. The album is not a drum solo record in the traditional sense.

As a proud Mexican-American who became a U.S. citizen at the tail end of President Barack Obama's term, Sanchez has also used the power of social media to be an activist against the policies of President Donald Trump, in a truly unprecedented time in America's history.  Sanchez uses music to push the ideas forward, doing something much needed in jazz today, making a social statement.  Jazz has always been a music bolstered by political and social concerns, an aspect that sometimes gets lost in modern jazz albums that tend to be overly musically analytical. “Bad Hombre” joins the ranks of jazz classics like Sonny Rollins' “The Freedom Suite” (Riverside, 1958) and “We Insist” (Candid, 1960) by Max Roach, and more recent albums such as trumpeter Terence Blanchard's excellent “Breathless” (Blue Note, 2015) and Gregory Lewis' stirring “Organ Monk: The Breathe Suite” (Self produced, 2017) in making a statement.

Sanchez' roots as a  Mexican come to the fore on “Bad Hombre Intro” using an old recording of a Mariachi band, with narration of an old corrido (tale of the Mexican revolution) “Benito Canales” from his grandfather Ignacio Lopez Tarso, who at 92 years old is one of the most famous, oldest working actors  in Mexico. Sanchez's , displaced Jack DeJohnette ish funk comes from far beyond the scope of the speakers, with his bass drum sounding almost doubled by a conga as it centers itself into the stereo image.  Floating Wurlitzer like chords announce themselves almost like music for the opening sequence of a film.  To borrow from one of Mexico's national pastimes, boxing, the title track's pounding bass ostinato is reminiscent of skillful footwork, as a base to set up cutting off the ring. Sanchez' subdivisions of the beat framing the ostinato only using bass drum, snare, toms, hi hat and cymbal stack are like Julio Cesar Chavez devastating his opponent with a stinging body attack set up by his vaunted left hook.  A ominous spiraling synth sequence fades in, along with more synth creating a drone back drop.  A furious flurry of double bass pedal work and electronically altered reversed, distorted drums explodes into the sudden splashing of crash, ride and swish knocker cymbals flailing a drum n bass like rhythm in front of a deliriously gleeful distorted electronic wash.  “Fire Trail” utilizes a 4/4 sequenced synth pattern while Sanchez superimposes 5/4 drumming over the top, not unlike rhythmic derring do he used to do as a member of Perez' band. The superimposing of a 5/4 meter here is totally natural.  Usually the listener is tipped off to an odd meter by unusual movement and accents in the rhythmic pattern, but here it's very subtle and totally organic, not loudly screaming that it's an odd meter. “Momentum” ushers in Sanchez's signature snapping flams on the rim of the snare, glistening cowbell hits, into a whirling, purposeful increase of tempo with equally ecstatic transformations of acoustic sound such as reversed tom and cymbal rolls. The drummer’s rock roots and exploration of different  dampening techniques come to the fore on “The Crossing” where t-shirt deadened snare and toms bring to mind John Bonham and fills reminiscent of the drum groove on “Pavane” on the Alan Parsons' Project's classic “Tales Of Mystery And Imagination” (Island, 1976).  The closing “Anti-Social” comes closest to typical “jazz” content featuring a swinging 4/4, Sanchez' commentary with snare and bass drum dialect firmly in post Tony Williams and Jack DeJohnette mode, transitioning into a more surreal sound collage complete with Sanchez speaking Spanish, and coughs deep in the mix in time with the drums.

“Bad Hombre” is truly a watershed album in Sanchez' career.  Along with drummers Mark Giuliana and Chris Dave he has helped redefine the language of jazz drumming and add to it, whereas in the fairly linear progression of jazz history innovation tends to stop at Elvin Jones, Tony Williams, Jack DeJohnette and Billy Cobham, while sometimes including Jeff “Tain” Watts. Jazz drumming vocabulary is being subtly enhanced today by the use of special effects like tom drums with tambourines bells lined along the head or cymbal stacks, which carry a similar effect to a much larger 20 or 22” China swish knocker providing a similar trash, just drier.  Sanchez' electronic manipulation of acoustic drums as well as using unconventional dampening methods to acoustic drum sounds, truly expand the palette.  Additionally this album is best heard on a good hi fi pair of headphones where all the subtle details pop out.  “Bad Hombre” is an astonishing new chapter in the ongoing narrative of Antonio Sanchez

Rating: 10/10