Biography
Hanno Leichtmann works as a German percussionist, sound artist, and composer whose output spans jazz, experimental, and electronic realms while also encompassing the curation of festivals and events throughout Berlin. Across solo and joint endeavors he blends improvisation with minimalism, looping and sampling methods, and traces of pop and folk. His Static project stands out most prominently, having issued such acclaimed recordings as the 2002 album Eject Your Mind. Leichtmann further explores house under the name Vulva String Quartett, issues experimental solo material under his own name—including the 2006 release Nuit du Plomb and the 2013 cassette Unfinished Portrait of Youth Today—and participates in Groupshow alongside Jan Jelinek and Andrew Pekler.
Rooted in jazz, he issued his first solo recording in 1997, the 10" EP Monolith of experimental percussive loops on Bits & Pieces. During that same year he also began appearing with the experimental chanson trio Ich Schwitze Nie and with Paloma, the techno-oriented duo he formed with Johannes Strobl. In 1998 he joined Strobl and Rupert Huber for the freely improvised jazz album Dawn. Leichtmann introduced the Static alias in 2001; the melodic downtempo IDM outlet first appeared on singles via Mermaid and Audio.nl, then delivered its debut full-length Eject Your Mind through City Centre Offices in 2002. Flavour Has No Name arrived the following year, with Re: Talking About Memories following in 2005.
Leichtmann inaugurated the house project Vulva String Quartett in 2005 via several 12"s on Combination Records. Another solo outlet, Forest Jackson, produced the glitch-oriented Cymbalism album on Mosz in 2006. That year also saw the appearance of Nuit du Plomb, Leichtmann’s initial full-length under his own name, issued by Karaoke Kalk in a more melodic and ambient vein. He formed Groupshow in 2009 with Jan Jelinek and Andrew Pekler, yielding the Krautrock-inflected debut The Martyrdom of Groupshow on Pole’s ~scape imprint. In 2010 Leichtmann and Strobl launched Denseland together with percussionist and vocalist David Moss; the trio’s opening album Chunk came out on Mosz.
Leichtmann revived Static with the 2011 Karaoke Kalk album Freedom of Noise. That year Dekorder also put out his score for Christoph Schlingensief’s film The African Twintower Suite. He initiated the Picture/Disk series of lathe-cut singles in 2013, each edition limited to 23 copies and featuring distinct artwork. The same year brought Minimal Studies on the Russian label Mikroton Recordings, Denseland’s second album Like Likes Like via M=Minimal, and the brief glitch pieces of Unfinished Portrait of Youth Today on The Tapeworm cassette (expanded to vinyl two years later on Karlrecords). Primitiva, comprising glitch constructions created for a four-channel installation at Osthaus Museum in Hagen, Germany, appeared on the Kompakt-affiliated imprint Exponate in 2016. Two further LPs with Valerio Tricoli—The Future of Discipline (2016) and La Casa delle Chimere (2018)—were released by Entr’acte. Karlrecords issued Nouvelle Aventure, another set of installation-derived pieces, in 2018.
Rooted in jazz, he issued his first solo recording in 1997, the 10" EP Monolith of experimental percussive loops on Bits & Pieces. During that same year he also began appearing with the experimental chanson trio Ich Schwitze Nie and with Paloma, the techno-oriented duo he formed with Johannes Strobl. In 1998 he joined Strobl and Rupert Huber for the freely improvised jazz album Dawn. Leichtmann introduced the Static alias in 2001; the melodic downtempo IDM outlet first appeared on singles via Mermaid and Audio.nl, then delivered its debut full-length Eject Your Mind through City Centre Offices in 2002. Flavour Has No Name arrived the following year, with Re: Talking About Memories following in 2005.
Leichtmann inaugurated the house project Vulva String Quartett in 2005 via several 12"s on Combination Records. Another solo outlet, Forest Jackson, produced the glitch-oriented Cymbalism album on Mosz in 2006. That year also saw the appearance of Nuit du Plomb, Leichtmann’s initial full-length under his own name, issued by Karaoke Kalk in a more melodic and ambient vein. He formed Groupshow in 2009 with Jan Jelinek and Andrew Pekler, yielding the Krautrock-inflected debut The Martyrdom of Groupshow on Pole’s ~scape imprint. In 2010 Leichtmann and Strobl launched Denseland together with percussionist and vocalist David Moss; the trio’s opening album Chunk came out on Mosz.
Leichtmann revived Static with the 2011 Karaoke Kalk album Freedom of Noise. That year Dekorder also put out his score for Christoph Schlingensief’s film The African Twintower Suite. He initiated the Picture/Disk series of lathe-cut singles in 2013, each edition limited to 23 copies and featuring distinct artwork. The same year brought Minimal Studies on the Russian label Mikroton Recordings, Denseland’s second album Like Likes Like via M=Minimal, and the brief glitch pieces of Unfinished Portrait of Youth Today on The Tapeworm cassette (expanded to vinyl two years later on Karlrecords). Primitiva, comprising glitch constructions created for a four-channel installation at Osthaus Museum in Hagen, Germany, appeared on the Kompakt-affiliated imprint Exponate in 2016. Two further LPs with Valerio Tricoli—The Future of Discipline (2016) and La Casa delle Chimere (2018)—were released by Entr’acte. Karlrecords issued Nouvelle Aventure, another set of installation-derived pieces, in 2018.
Albums
