S.P.Y.

Joshua Ralph, a film student with a growing fascination for home recordings, launched the dance project Spy after turning those private experiments into a recording contract. Raised on Long Island, he spent one year at SUNY-Buffalo before returning to New York City to enroll at NYU’s film school. Most of his energy, however, went into creating tape recordings alone rather than attending classes. While circulating his demos across the city, he connected with musician Alex Weil and engineer Louis Scalise. Under the Lava/Atlantic imprint, he issued his first album, Music to Mauzner By, in 1999.