Ghostly at 25: Key moments from the label’s first quarter century
thefader.comTwenty-five years ago, Ghostly International was born inside a University of Michigan dorm room. Sam Valenti IV was a 19-year-old art history major studying Jackson Pollock by day and DJing warehouses by night; in between, he pressed records and drove around the city to different record stores, selling them copies from the back of his car.
The first release was a 12” featuring Matthew Dear’s seminal techno anthem, “Hands Up For Detroit,” which went on to be sampled in Fedde Le Grand’s 2006 worldwide dance hit, a culture-shifting moment that Valenti can’t help but feel “tangentially proud” of.
Since then, Valenti’s influence has only grown thanks to a curiosity that has never waned. Unlike other label heads, he’s never been a fan of creative restrictions, streaming data, or business mandates.
Instead, Valenti allows his roster of leftfield artists the creative freedom to experiment and get weird, “surfing on the edges” on the cultural zeitgeist, often to long-standing success..
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