Antonio Sanchez first made his name as a long-serving sideman of the Pat Metheny group. Though he’s been fairly recently receiving recognition for his band Migration, it was a drums soliloquy on the soundtrack for the 2016 Hollywood indie movie Birdman (he’s been recently touring the ‘live’ version) that put him squarely in the spotlight. Bad Hombre is in some ways, a follow-up to Birdman, and in others an entirely new departure with its fusion of solo acoustic drums, studio electronics, keys and sampling, something he’s been incubating in his new home studio over the long term. Sanchez is of Mexican heritage and the album addresses president Trump’s flagrant hostility towards his compatriots; Bad Hombre is titled after the name given to Mexicans in the US by Trump in a speech during his election campaign. Sanchez vents his spleen by taking a walk on the noir side. A voiceover on a scratchy vinyl recording about the Mexican revolution (it’s in Spanish, so we have to believe the liner notes) by Sanchez’ 92-year-old grandfather Ignacio Lopez Tarso (a famous Mexican actor) over a mariachi band backdrop opens the album. But it feels like a token gesture; at least musically and culturally, the Mexican theme is not explored elsewhere. Sanchez instead creates interesting spookily ambient, rock-fuelled, soundscapes with looping electronica and acoustic drums merging effectively. The stop-and-start nature of his drum patterns are especially riveting and seem to be inspired by his improvisatory work in front of the screen on Birdman as he references the doomy sonic world of bands such as Squarepusher and Aphex Twin at the expense of any melodic or harmonic development. However, a rhythmic sophistication from his jazz background ought to be enough to win over open-minded fans from both scenes.