Nepol Records
Bio Genesis began in spring 1999 in Jacksonville, Florida, when jazz-trained musicians Chris Havens and Marc Smith booked a local DJ named Jason Short for a gig at their school — and quickly realized the three of them were meant to work together. Havens, born in Nashville, was a drum-set and jazz studies major at the University of North Florida, raised on Miles Davis and Coltrane; his chunky, tribal sensibility — compared to Danny Tenaglia and DJ Garth — gave the trio its funk and rhythmic complexity. Smith, from Willingboro, New Jersey, had been pulled on stage by B.B. King as a kid and handed the legend’s guitar pick — the moment that set him on music for life. A blues guitarist who once led a quartet with Havens on drums, he brought the tight melodies, harmonies and obsessive layering. Short, born in Long Beach, California, supplied the beats and the weird sound designs.
Together they fused that musicianship with driving house rhythms across the progressive moment of the early 2000s. Two originals for Orlando’s Xplosion Records — “Life Is A Form Of Matter” and “Bodhi’s Dream” — carried remixes by Ariel Baund, the Shadow Lounge resident with Ministry of Sound releases and a #2 placing on Paul van Dyk’s chart at Germany’s Fritz Radio; “Life Is A Form Of Matter” was licensed to the Japanese mix compilation “Essence Phase 2.” And in 2001, “Thoughts of the Future” — with vocals by Victoria Saunders — became NR 001, the record that launched Nepol, backed with a Collective Consciousness Remix by Phoenix & dysphonix. Bio Genesis also reached wider ears on Florida progressive-house figure Noel Sanger’s “Summerbreeze” mix.
Each member’s path kept climbing. Jason Short recorded for Nepol as Sattva before a career spanning Auralism Records and today’s Sol Glissant project. Marc Smith and Chris Havens remixed for the label as Groove Element, with Smith going on to Coalition of the Killing and his current Indoor Man alias. Wherever the three went, it began here — with the genesis.