Culture
They invented the remix
Jamaica came up with the idea, but the remix as we know it was born in New York
One song, ‘Seventh Heaven’, really helped describe a new direction in dance music that, alongside other mixes like David Joseph’s amazing ‘You Can’t Hide Your Love’ and the aforementioned Peech Boys, mixed electronics with traditional disco instrumentation, acting as a bridge between disco and the imminent arrival of house (and its New York cousin, garage, named after Levan’s club).
François Kevorkian’s work with Prelude Records was also crucial in mapping out new territory. After moving over from France to study under jazz-fusion drummer Tony Williams, François got his first break drumming along to Walter Gibbons at Galaxy 21. His first studio forays were compiling edits of breaks he’d heard DJs like Walter Gibbons play live in clubs, like Rare Earth’s ‘Happy Song And Dance’.
“It was just a copy of what Walter used to do with ‘Happy Song’. I had made all these little dubplates which were like concentrated energy at the time; it was difficult for a DJ to do fancy moves all the time all night, so my dubplates were really a kind of greatest hits formula.”
Within a week of being offered the post of A&R – at the time François didn’t even know what an A&R did – he was in the studio remixing ‘In The Bush’ by Musique. “The record just blew out,” says François. “I mean, it exploded. Anywhere you went in the summer of ’78, they were playing that fucking record. I brought it to the Garage and Larry loved it.” François became the in house remixer at Prelude, subsequently having a hand on many of their releases (often signing them, too), including hits like D-Train’s ‘You’re The One For Me’.
Of course, Moulton, Gibbons, Levan and Kevorkian were not alone. Among the other pioneers of the remix were David Todd & Nick Martinelli, Morales & Munzibai, Tony Humphries and Shep Pettibone, who later worked with Madonna. These remix originators laid the foundation stones for what later became house music, incorporating electronic instrumentation, drum machines and dub techniques into their remixes and productions, so much so that the change from disco to house in New York was a seamless transition. As West End’s Mel Cheren commented, at the end of the day, “House was disco on a budget.”
The compilation ‘Larry Levan: Genius Of Time’ is out on UMG on March 28
