Projekt and Black tape for a blue girl's founder Sam Rosenthal had his musical beginnings in electronic music before there were genre names like “electronica.” Back in 1986 -- before there were sequencers, before there were samplers, before MIDI became the norm for stringing together computers and keyboards -- Rosenthal was experimenting with the creation of instrumental music synchronously warm and ominous. Playing with the shape of sounds in a totally “hands-on” manner, Rosenthal pioneered a style close to the post-prog work of Tangerine Dream and Brian Eno. Sam calls this early music a "learning phase," for these were the first experiments with sound layering and collage.