Set up in 1994 by childhood friends/musicians Kirk Zavieh and Charles Hodgkinson, Adelphoi has expanded to include five additional full-time composers. Creating the sonic identity for events like the 2000 D&AD show, commercial music for Jaguar, Boots and Everest for JWT, Barclaycard for BMP DDB, Adidas for Leagas Delaney or audio image branding for networks including Cinenova, The Box, Discovery Channel, Channel 4 and Bloomberg, have kept the studios humming, while producing records keeps the company outside of the music box.

Zavieh and Hodgkinson, friends since age 10, entered the music game while working for Arista, writing songs and developing artists such as garage diva Gina West or jazzy drum & bass act Technikolor back in the early 1990s. Then an old school friend producing commercials for Lowe Howard Spink hooked them up with a commercial for Braun; their track was used and they realized that advertising could be a means to their musical ends. They soon moved out of Zavieh's basement studio into a larger space in Covent Gardens and eventually, Adelphoi grew to its current size.

"We have five full-time composers and five freelancers we call in when overloaded, plus Kirk and myself," says Hodgkinson. "We create music for commercials, the radio or the underground. London is stimulating, so at first we were unknowingly offering genuine music that wasn't your classic jingle or pastiche sound. We produce the genuine article."

Hodgkinson say producing music through their label SI Project keeps Adelphoi connected with the latest in music trends. SI released Urban Soul Collective's recent broken beat album [broken beat is an increasingly talked up genre, mostly rhythmic loops cut up and reassembled in a syncopated way; for example, "Creating Patterns" by 4hero].

"SI stands for Soul Innovation and we put out music on the shuffly garage/house tip, sort of Roger Sanchez style, but a bit more underground. We put out a good album by Cricco Castelli last year, with jazzy elements and the shuffly syncopated rhythms," says Hodgkinson. "We run the label at the same time as Adelphoi with the help of label manager Kit Wood. It keeps us constantly in touch with new music."

Other Adelphoi projects from the group have included ghostwriting kitschy disco melodies for Japanese pop acts like Arashi. But commercials remain a key focus, one the company approaches collaboratively. Putting composers with different styles on one job or incorporating influences from non-musical sources like graphic design help maintain the standard Adelphoi seeks.

"If we don't win a job, we feel fine as long as we are creating music of a sufficient quality that is innovative and fulfilling our own requirements. We never do more than three demos, which is a good way of doing it. You are constantly your own sort of judge," says Hodgkinson. If we were failing to win work, we'd know it was wrong."

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