PVD

Pat Van Dyke, known professionally as PVD, works as a producer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist who places drums at the center of his rhythmic sensibility. The Jersey City native merges jazz, funk, and beats into quasi-electronica instrumentals that carry a pronounced retro character through vintage keys and acoustic elements such as horns and woodwinds.

His first album under the PVD name, the 2005 LP Down for the Get Down, emphasized soul-jazz textures across its instrumentals. He next joined forces with DJ John Robinson, and the pair delivered the full-length All the Way Live in 2009. Still recording as PVD, he joined rapper 8thW1 for the Lux DeVille EP in 2010, the same year he issued the collection of original, royalty-free breakbeats titled PVD Breaks, Vol. 1. Early in 2011 the album Sounds Like This! appeared, showcasing trumpet from Rich Polatchek and woodwinds from Bryan Beninghove. A year afterward came PVD Breaks, Vol. 2. In 2013 a full-length edition of Lux DeVille surfaced together with Lux DeVille: The Instrumentals, and later that year Technicolor Hi-Fi arrived under the Pat Van Dyke moniker.

Van Dyke rejoined Robinson for the 2014 project Modern Vintage Instrumentals and followed it with the Lux DeVille Live at the Loft EP. Operating again under his complete name, he released Right on Time in spring 2015 and Technicolor Hi-Fi Remixes that summer. Philadelphia’s Record Breakin’ Music put out the Let the Horns Blow EP in September 2016, a four-track set built on funk and beats. Between albums Van Dyke maintained a consistent output of standalone singles, covers, and remixes, among them his September 2016 version of “Paper Proclamation” by Suff Daddy featuring Mayer Hawthorne. His third official solo album, Hello, Summer, reached listeners in 2018 and included contributions from Zac Colwell on woodwinds, Peter Lin on trombone, and David Stolarz on Wurlitzer and organ.