Leæther Strip

Leæther Strip serves as the solo outlet for Danish electronic musician and producer Claus Larsen. Its emergence in the early 1990s featured an aggressive approach that laid groundwork for the EBM and electro-industrial scenes across Western Europe. Among the earliest signings to Germany's leading Zoth Ommog imprint, the project held sway throughout the 1990s and has kept the dark electro-industrial and EBM traditions alive into the 2010s and 2020s.

Larsen, who grew up in Aalborg, Denmark, first experimented within the heavy metal community before redirecting his efforts toward electronic music by the late 1980s. Seeking to transform his admiration for Depeche Mode and Soft Cell into fresh territory, he activated the Leæther Strip name in 1989 through the single "Japanese Bodies," issued on the then-new Zoth Ommog label.

The full-length albums Pleasure of Penetration and Science for the Satanic Citizen followed in 1990, anchoring the project across Germany, Belgium, and Denmark. In 1991 Larsen launched the industrial metal side project Klute, which generated several EPs, singles, and albums before the name shifted to Klutæ in 2006 to avoid overlap with drum'n'bass artist Tom Withers.

Six additional albums and five further EPs appeared on Zoth Ommog before the label ceased operations in 1999. During this span, Semaphore handled broader European distribution while Cleopatra and Metropolis Records secured U.S. availability. Larsen kept Leæther Strip largely dormant from 2000 through 2005 amid label complications and personal circumstances, yet returned in 2007 with the studio album The Giant Minutes to the Dawn on Alfa Matrix, reviving the pounding electro-industrial drive of the project's earlier period.

Four more full-length releases followed on Alfa Matrix before Larsen moved to independent operations in 2011. Since then Leæther Strip has sustained live performances in Denmark and abroad while delivering socially and politically charged EBM and industrial material such as Æscapism (2014), World Molæster (2018), and Last Station (2023). The seventh volume of the ongoing covers series Aeppreciation appeared in 2024.