2017 · Album
Bad Hombre
CAM Jazz · Released: September 29, 2017 · Grammy Nomination: Best Contemporary Instrumental Album (2018)
Drums, Electronics, and Family Ghosts
A solo recording where Sánchez wraps acoustic drumming in layers of keyboards, noise, and narrative voice.
Bad Hombre is Antonio Sánchez working alone in the studio, layering his drumming with keyboards, electronics, and field recordings to build something cinematic and deliberately unsettling. The album opens with a scratchy recording of his grandfather reading poetry over a mariachi band—Mexican roots announced immediately—before crisp, funky beats anchor the rest. Sánchez moves between dreamy and nightmarish moods, each track a different room to inhabit. The drums are always the spine, but they're never alone; synths, noise, and processed vocals crowd the mix in ways that feel intentional, even claustrophobic.
This is the album to start with if you're new to Sánchez. It's more personal than his earlier work, less concerned with accommodating other soloists and more interested in exploring what one drummer can build when given complete control over the sonic landscape. The playing is sharp and inventive—Sánchez has always been a thinking drummer, but here he's thinking out loud, letting his rhythmic ideas breathe inside a densely layered world. It won a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album in 2018, which matters less than the fact that it sounds like no other drumming record you've heard.
The album works because Sánchez refuses to let the electronics overshadow the drums or the drums overshadow the concept. Financial Times reviewer Mike Hobart described it as an "atmospheric and imaginative solo recording that envelops beautifully formed drum creations," and that balance—between classical craft and experimental texture—is what makes Bad Hombre worth hearing first.
