IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS $30...

And it was all we had.  That and a little sausage of a record called "Street Themes." Original label co-founder Mike Mell and I had spent a couple of months holed up in bedroom studios writing and recording the songs, playing every instrument along the way.  Our equipment was faulty at best: lousy digital recorders, malfunctioning vintage keyboards, a set of 75 dollar drums in a walk-in closet.  We managed.  By the time we were finished, we had some basic artwork, blank CDR's, and a round trip ticket to the local Kinko's for an all night manufacturing session.  Each album sleeve was hand cut, glued, and fitted with a Velcro fastener to open and close it.  That was the very first record we released under the Nophi label.

We eventually set up a website to handle mail orders and began gathering up as many like-minded artists as we could find -- nine, if you included us.  We held impromptu parties at warehouses and public parks, lugging hordes of desktop computers out rain or shine.  Soon after, we assembled a series of tracks by our little crew of artists into a 40 minute compilation disc known as Compilation One.  We then set out on foot to bomb them at Otto Von Schirach's album release party in Miami.  Some of those compilations got into the hands of key scenesters and booking agents.  The next thing we knew, we were being asked to play live electronic music with some of the established Miami crews.  It happened brutally fast, and within a few months, we were at the top of our game.

For some reason, we moved to Orlando, this time with less than $30 to spare.  We had some food stamps and an old Volkswagen Beetle to roll around in.  We didn't know anybody.  We tried to find jobs, we tried to be in a band, we struggled to release some albums.  Things got hairy -- we split up.   Mikey went on the road with a reggae band and I stayed home and finished writing Good News for Everyone.  We reformed and made new friends.  Compilation Two brought us back together.  Around this time, we were getting some radio play and folks were starting to use our mail order system a bit more.  We held our first nightclub showcase at a Goth bar in Orlando.  The bartenders wore nipple tape and for an extra five bucks, you could drink booze out of their belly buttons.  The bar liked our music enough to fuck us on the door money.  We were just happy to have a place to play.

Orlando was good to us.  After a while, we were calling the shots, bringing in touring artists and establishing a rapport with every nightclub in town.  I released Animal Outline on Nophi.  The Orlando weekly wrote a fabulous puff-piece about me and Urb magazine gave me a full page.  We were touring the east coast regularly.  We had three successful weeklies.  I made artist in residence at a swanky club.  Things were looking great.  Mikey and i dissolved our business relations for reasons of irreconcilable stupidity on both sides.  I moved back to Ft.  Lauderdale after 3 years of hard charging.  It was the right thing to do.  Oddly enough, this is where Nophi truly blossomed.  I was working overnight at a Kinko's and finishing my liberal arts degree by day.  In that 6 month span I released albums by Plusses and Ups, Flexe, Virgo, Labtob and Satellite Grooves.  I moved into a crappy apartment in Plantation and picked up where i left off, releasing albums by Recompas, Myself, Kalx, Linenoise, and Aitanna77 in the following months.  It was a renaissance of good electronic music.  I took on a partner, Matt Simpson -- we launched Phitunes, our greatest endeavor to date.  Things were better than ever. 

My crappy apartment was destroyed in Hurricane Wilma.  I left Ft.  Lauderdale for Atlanta.  Matt and I now live about 5 minutes down the street from each other.  We still do it all ourselves, but we do it better.  We have so much incredible stuff in the works right now, you aren't even going to believe this is the same label that handed you a photocopied hunk of cardboard full of crazy music six years ago.