- A loving tribute to a house pioneer.
- Last month, about 5,000 people turned up to New York's Fort Greene Park to celebrate the life of Boyd Jarvis with his closest collaborator, Timmy Regisford. These days, lo-fi bedroom aesthetics can feel like a fashion statement, but Jarvis and Regisford damn near invented house music in their bedroom sessions. For evidence, check out the nine-minute version of "Stomp", which eventually became Visual's seminal 1984 track "The Music Got Me." If you want to know why thousands of people turned up to celebrate Jarvis's legacy, check out his dub of Chocolate's "It's That East Street Beat" or the "Ruff Mix" of Tammy Lucas's "Hey Boy." When he lugged his Yamaha CS-15 to jam with Regisford at Better Days and on the air at WBLS, Jarvis was flowing over classic garage house cuts that still hold their power.
It feels natural, then, that producers following in Jarvis's footsteps reached out to Jarvis for some of that East Coast magic prior to his untimely passing. Mark Seven, whose study of the period between disco, boogie and house music borders on freakish, says, "The sound of [Jarvis's] floating keys over heavy dubs directly inspired the Parkway sound and gave us the energy to make "Working Girl."
When Seven sent Jarvis the demo for "Broad Street Pressure," he replied, "Wow man sounds like me, I'm flattered!" Indeed, the loose, floating yet heavy sound of Broad Street Pressure evokes not only Jarvis's legendary keys, but other producers following in the lineage of New York and New Jersey house. On the "Deep Pressure Powermix," Jarvis's colourful yet restrained organ solo brings to mind Bobby Konders' deep-as-the-ocean "Poem." On Seven's own "Tribal Pressure" version, he mixes up chants and a soaring piano riff. Each track hovers around 110 BPM, a nod to the original low-slung garage house style. That, the record pool-style promo sheet and other details make Broad Street Pressure a loving tribute to a house pioneer.
TracklistA1 Broad Street Pressure (Deep Pressure Powermix)
A2 Broad Street Pressure (Demo Mix)
B1 Broad Street Pressure (Tribal Pressure)
B2 Broad Street Pressure (Pressure Keys Powermix)