hanno leichtmann: unfinished portrait of youth today

Hanno Leichtmann has long been one of the most prolific protagonists of Berlin's electronic music scene and beyond; as an experimental percussionist and electronic artist Leichtmann has released several albums under his given name, under such aliases as Static and The Vulva String Quartett, and in bands like Groupshow (with Jan Jelinek and Andrew Pekler) and Denseland (with David Moss and Hannes Strobl) on labels like Karaoke Kalk, m=minimal, Dekorder, and Staubgold. Leichtmann also composed and produced the soundtrack to Christoph Schlingensief's The African Twintowers (2007), the first DVD edition of which will follow this LP in summer 2015, five years after Schlingensief's tragic death. In addition to his musical work, Leichtmann also curates conceptual music festivals, including My Favourite Thing in 2008 and Letra/Tone in 2014. In 2013 he released Minimal Studies, on which he began building tracks using very short loops from various sample sources. This LP is an expanded reissue of Leichtmann's 2013 contribution to The Tapeworm's tape series, for which he browsed the remaining 30-plus cassettes of his once-huge collection, took little snippets of his favorite songs, ran them through a modular synthesizer system, and created about 40 short pieces, all about one minute and 30 seconds long. Leichtmann: "They are highly influenced by and, at the same time, an homage to: John Oswald's Plunderphonics, Stock, Hausen & Walkman's Me 7", and, above all, Yasuaki Shimizu's Music for Commercials." Originally released in a limited tape edition of 200 copies, Unfinished Portrait of Youth Today is now available on LP for the first time, with the addition of six previously unreleased tracks. All music created by Hanno Leichtmann using tapes, Sony WM-D6C, modular system, Telefunken EQS, and Lexicon LXP-5. Recorded at Static Music, Berlin. Mastered for vinyl by Kassian Troyer. Artwork by Stephan Mathieu and Caro Mikalef. Pressed on 180-gram vinyl. Includes download code.