JONDI & SPESH – unlimited talent!

When Jondi met Spesh at a party in San Francisco's South of Market district in 1993, neither realized that the meeting would eventually take them to the creative center of the San Francisco dance music community and put them on the map as two of the world's most innovative and risk-taking dance music producers.

Ten years later, Jondi & Spesh have a music label with over twenty releases (the Loöq 12"'s get praise and play from all the biggest - Digweed, Oakenfold, Sasha, Tong, Tenaglia, etc.), an extremely popular event (Qoöl, the world's first underground dance music happy hour) going into it's eighth year, two full length albums with the highest critical praise , and a third album on Spundae Records that may very well unearth them from the underground and put them solidly into that "strange yet widely appealing" category currently inhabited by the likes of Radiohead, Björk, and Sigur Ros.

JD Moyer (Jondi) and Stephen Kay (Spesh) are an unlikely pair - wildly divergent personalities that combine in the studio to creative a creative alchemy: electricity is converted into pleasing noise. Spesh is the strategic mastermind of the duo ... a Vulcan-like intellect with zero tolerance for mushy thinking - he is often five steps ahead of whoever he is speaking with yet is too socially gracious to let them catch on to that fact. His personality is like his DJ sets ... charismatic yet somehow reserved and intimate (this massive subtlety has gained him a large following independent of his production work). For Spesh music is about connecting to people ... even his most twisted production ideas have warmth and accessibility.

Jondi is the slightly more feral side of the duo. While Spesh is a gourmand and culinary expert, Jondi will eat out of paper bags on the kitchen floor if left to his own devices. His creative nature is both prolific and schizophrenic ... there are never less than four current projects on the hard disk at any moment (music, of course, but also programming artificial life software, writing a screenplay, and communicating with random scientists in various fields "just to keep up"). Musically he brings innovation, a desire for constant change, and a trigger happy mouse hand that eventually led to a bone spur on his right clavicle (a problem solved by forced ambidexterity). Philosophically Jondi is slightly left of normal, convinced that after death, he and all of humanity will be resurrected as a fully conscious simulations of themselves by infinitely intelligent space-faring supercomputers.

The new Jondi & Spesh album, "The Answer," stays true to their previous work with minimalistic melodies and enormously fat production, yet diverges stylistically with big hooky choruses on several songs, and sublime female vocals on others. The sound palette is organic and unique, with timbres morphing among vocal, synth, and analog natures. "It's by far our best work to date," says Jondi.

• They have just finished producing their third artist album. (Their previous album “We Are Connected” hit #30 in the Albums Of The Year 2000 Chart in Muzik Magazine, ahead of Madonna).
• They run their own successful label in San Francisco, Looq Records.
• MTV America aired all 4 videos of JONDI & SPESH through their network.
• They have written and produced the music used in two major motion pictures, “Groove the Movie” (Sony Pictures) and “On_Line the Movie” (Indican Pictures) of the latter opened with national distribution in the US on 27 June 2003 and also includes the release of a soundtrack.
• They have written and produced the music which has been post-scored and/or licensed for advertising by Sony Playstation (Eidos Interactive), GAP, Braun, Sega, and more.
• Their tracks have licensed for television by MTV in the US (for shows like “Road Rules”, “MTV Cribs” and more) and by Channel 4 in the UK for an extensive promo campaign for a new prison drama show entitled "Buried".
• They have recorded and remixed for labels including Looq (US), Bedrock/Black (UK), Dorigen (UK), Renaissance (UK) and Sog (Switzerland).
• They run a variety of club nights in and around San Francisco.
• They are both excellent DJs both jointly and in their own right (spinning with DJs such as Anthony Pappa, Dave Seaman, Chris Fortier, Jerry Bonham etc.

In Depth

For over a decade JONDI & SPESH have put out dance tracks of such stunning quality that the world’s DJ elite have gone to great lengths to hunt down their unique underground sound. John Digweed introduced them in the UK with “We Are Connected.” Renaissance spread their sound world-wide with the legendary JSJ collaborations (JONDI & SPESH with Jerry Bonham). Top-flite dj’s call weekly to hunt down back catalog releases and producers wish to spend half an hour observing their techniques in the studio.

JONDI & SPESH have been producing quality house music since '94, when their debut EP "Kali's Dream" helped to redefine the San Francisco sound and pushed the boundaries of what house music could be. Seven more EP's followed, with a great number of these early tracks being exposed through labels like Bedrock (UK), Dorigen (UK), Hardkiss (US) and Eye-Q (Germany).

In 1998, following the worldwide success of their single "We Are Connected" (the track was played on Pete Tong's Essential Mix show and was later licensed to John Digweed's Bedrock mix cd, as well as being reissued in the UK with a remix by Circulation), Jondi & Spesh started their own label, Loöq Records, to push a more global sound. Around the same time they began to book a wide range of San Francisco and international talent for their legendary underground techno happy hour "Qoöl" - the first of its kind in San Francisco, if not the world.

Music videos for all 4 JONDI & SPESH tracks were aired by MTV America through their network. These are as follows and can be checked out at:-
Jondi & Spesh, The Sway, directed by Kia Simon
aired extensively on M2 2001-2002

Jondi & Spesh, We Are Connected, directed by Sean McLean aired extensively on M2 and multiple times on MTV's AMP in 2000-2001

Jondi & Spesh, Phreek Out, from the album Tube Drivers, directed by Bryan Boyce aired multiple times on MTV's AMP in 2000

Jondi & Spesh, Impenetrable Sayonara, from the album Tube Drivers, directed by Sean McLean aired multiple times on MTV's AMP in 1999

Their prolific output of tunes and remixes on Loöq, Bedrock Black, SOG, Renaissance and others have received play from the world's top dj's, including Nick Warren, Jerry Bonham, Sasha, Anthony Pappa, Danny Tenaglia, and Lee Burridge. Their second full length album "We Are Connected," received rave reviews in both the UK (Muzik's listed it in the top 40 albums of 2000 whilst Mixmag called them “dons of west coast progressive house”) and US press, and received abundant radio play and charting on college stations in the US.

High profile JONDI & SPESH remixes include Greed's "Strange World" (SOG, Switzerland), Hardkiss/God Within's epic track "Raincry" (on Dorigen, UK), Memnon's "Desire" (on Renaissance, UK), "Foundation" by Basscamp (Pod, UK), as well as a recent job on a summer 2002 UK release of an all-time classic vocal track by Opus 3. This is in addition to their remix work on their own label, Loöq Records, which so far includes remixes for The Activity, Shakatura, Momu, Telemetry, and Reza.

JONDI & SPESH have also been open to collaboration in the studio, working with a diverse spectrum of talent including DRC, Jerry Bonham (as JSJ for Renaissance), and Brian Stillwater (for Mechanism UK) and anyone else willing to make the trek to their secretly located gear-packed studio. Jondi is also half of the breaks duo “Momu,” a new project with Mark Musselman that is gaining attention from Cass, Lee Burridge, Tayo, Jonathan Lisle, and DJ Hyper, and will soon be releasing tracks on Fire, Functional Breaks, and Spundae Recordings.

Currently JONDI & SPESH split their time between hosting several infamous San Francisco events (Qoöl, Loöq Hard, Qoöl Saturdays at DNA Lounge), doing original work and remixes for various labels around the world, and tending to their own label, Loöq Records, and their brand new house music sublabel Löqo. In addition to this Jondi & Spesh have a packed dj schedule, performing both together and separately, in San Francisco and beyond. Jondi and Spesh spin with the world’s top dj’s, including Anthony Pappa, Dave Seaman, Chris Fortier, Jerry Bonham, and many more.

"The Answer" - critical praises, album reviews & interviews

"[an] almost lounge-sounding aural kaleidoscope ... groovy, danceable, and eminently listenable machine pop."
-Steve Sande, San Francisco Chronicle

"impressive collection of hook-laden pop-prog rockers and exquisite, breaks-driven dream- scapes"
-Bill Picture, San Francisco Examiner

"Brilliant! I f*cking love it!"
- Mason Rothert, Co-Founder & Programming Director, Thump Radio

"'Back Alive' [from Jondi & Spesh's The Answer] is a brilliant track."
- Paul Oakenfold

"A bona fide eye/ear opener, and a top draw one at that."
-Kieran Wyatt, BPM Culture

"Love it! Amazing!"
-Andy Horsfield, Global Underground

"Deep, silky, thought-provoking ... 'The Answer' is the answer to breaking away from the norm."
-raves.com

"The Answer (Spundae) runs from relatively understated tech stylings to main-floor anthems big enough to make Paul Oakenfold gush."
-San Francisco Bay Guardian

"The album is truly a masterpiece!"
- Torsten Jurk, Spundae Records

We Are Conneted album reviews
Hearsay (US)
CMJ (US)
SF Weekly (US)
Mixer (US)
URB (US)
XLR8R (US)
Mixmag (UK)
Muzik (UK)
Ministry (UK)

Other reviews and press
BPM (US) / Rain
BPM (US) / Rain 2
Mixer (US) / Phreq Atak
Remix (US)
URB (US)
URB (US) Rain

Picture library
Jondi & Spesh in London (.jpg)
Jondi & Spesh in SF (.pdf)
Jondi & Spesh The Answer album cover (300 dpi / pdf)
Jondi & Spesh The Answer album cover WEB (72 dpi / jpg)
Jondi & Spesh Logo (.psd)

Jondi & Spesh links
Jondi & Spesh "The Answer" album and tour updates
Jondi & Spesh journal
Spesh
Loöq records