Sam Valenti IV
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| Ghostly International | |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1999 |
| Founder | Samuel Valenti IV |
| Genre | Electronic |
| Country of origin | US |
| Location | Ann Arbor, Michigan |
| Official website | http://www.ghostly.com |
Sam Valenti IV is the founder and A+R of The Ghostly International Company, home to two of America's best-known independent electronic-based labels. Ghostly and its sister-label, Spectral Sound represent a stable of recording artists exploring the fringes of experimental pop and dance music, and a unique team of forward-thinking graphic designers. The Michigan-based company has built a formidable reputation for artistic quality and innovation since its inception in 1999.
After spending his formative teenage years in the Detroit suburbs, he became a deep fan of any kind of underground music culture he could take in, finding his taste for it after sneaking into Hip-Hop clubs by carrying records for his Detroit DJ hero Houseshoes. Valenti got his first pair of decks at the age of 15 and donned the title DJ SpaceGhost. A ghost "logo" could be seen gracing Valenti's High School notebooks and would be a prophetic image of what was to come.
Ghostly International came to life in the discovery of a young artist named Matthew Dear at a house party that Valenti attended his first week at University. A Texas transplant to Michigan, Dear was seeking musical collaborators in Ann Arbor as well, while Valenti sought artists around whom he could form a new label. He soon met artists like Dabrye (Tadd Mullinix), Midwest Product, Dykehouse in Ann Arbor as well.
The mission statement from Ghostly announces the birth of a label for music fans in a modern era, foreshadowing the iPod era to come. A musical listenership who embraced everything from "Thrill Jockey to Blue Note". The "Everywhere Nowhere" company would be based on a DIY attitude but with a corporate sheen and whose goal was to offer an alternative to the mainstream deluge of formulaic and genre-fied electronic music.
Ghostly International is known as a design taste setter (beginning with 2002's Hardcover packaging for the Disco Nouveau compilation), a new media pioneer (one of the first adopters of the "digital-only" album release in 2005) and a technology first-mover (The Moss/Ghostly USB compilation created for the design boutique, Moss in 2006).
