Thank You, Sam

I remember stumbling across a CD by Black Tape For A Blue Girl at our college radio station back in the day — one jewel case among hundreds, but somehow the room seemed quieter when I held it. Time flows differently for independent musicians and label owners, and my mind still bends trying to calculate the subjective years of Projekt’s existence against the so-called “actual” ones.

In the 90s, Projekt helped anchor what we came to call the “ethereal” aesthetic — that twilight territory where ambient, classical, and dream-pop currents merged into something unclassifiable. If 4AD planted the tree with the Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, and This Mortal Coil, then C’est La Mort and Projekt were the saplings on this side of the Atlantic, taking root in different soils but drawing from the same dream-fed aquifer. Projekt didn’t just imitate the British model; it translated it for an American landscape — weaving in a darker romanticism, a willingness to linger in gothic shadows, and a deep commitment to independent craft.

It also bolstered the American “goth” scene — goth in quotes, because that word has always been squishier than the caricature: more than just wearing black and smoking clove cigarettes. This was a space for introspection, melancholy, romance, and the willingness to stay in minor keys without apology. Projekt’s catalog was broad enough to offer a different point of entry for each listener. Here’s my confession: of the entire discography, Loveliescrushing was and is my sole favorite — but it was enough. Their three Projekt releases created a self-contained universe, proof that even a single point of contact can sustain decades of memory.

Voltaire (now Aurelio Voltaire) felt like the gothy answer to Momus — a singular wit who could turn satire into a style guide (or maybe the style guide came first and the satire followed). His What Is Goth? didn’t just lampoon the subculture; it annotated it, giving footnotes and asides to a genre too often treated as parody or pathology by outsiders. Projekt gave space for that kind of play — the recognition that even in the most shadow-draped corners, there’s room for humor and the occasional arched eyebrow.

There’s a “nine lives” joke to be made here — especially considering the cat charity compilations Sam Rosenthal released — but each of those lives has been spent creating and curating beauty entirely on his own terms. I suspect some of those lives paid the price of surviving in the music realm over the past four decades, where being a small, independent label meant a constant fight against (or more often evading) the commoditized behemoth of the industry that lurched toward Bethlehem while crushing art, soul, and individuality along the way. That quiet persistence has kept a whole sonic ecosystem alive, one that refuses to compromise its tone or its mystery. That’s worth far more than a simple celebration.