Santiago Salazar

Low-key techno evangelist Santiago Salazar goes back as a DJ to the early '90s, when he spun in his native East Los Angeles, California. During the early 2000s, he relocated to Detroit, Michigan, where he fell in with the city's revered Underground Resistance collective. His time in the Motor City entailed activity with UR's Los Hermanos and Galaxy 2 Galaxy. In 2006, he returned to the West Coast and started the labels Major People and Ican and co-founded Historia y Violencia with Juan Mendez (Silent Servant). In 2015, after numerous 12" releases, Salazar finally issued a debut album, Chicanismo -- an unsurprisingly impressive and singular set of machine soul -- for the Pittsburgh-based Love What You Feel label. ~ Andy Kellman