Stephane Leonard - Lykkelig Dyr (2008)
by Lars Marstaller
If records were persons, Lykkelig Dyr would be someone navigating a maze of electro acoustic-playgrounds, someone farming data that is provided by the sensory surfaces of buzzing streets where familiar smiles crack wide open in their flickering fleeting transparency.
Lykkelig Dyr is focused, equipped with an electronically amplified awareness. The brooding boltzmann heat it envelopes reflects the never ending stream, its capillary thumping within myriads of family home labs flocked together like crystals - their whispers, their stories and dreams.
What makes Lykkelig Dyr«s 10 songs so exciting is their masterfully crisp and distinct sound structure. They dissect our collectives« mnemonic imageries as what they are: shiny cybernetic insects wrapped in paper-thin lucent gauze and enthrilled by suspicion. This stands in contrast to the songs« hovering planes of atmospheric mirages that form an enticing display of delicate sonic morph dynamics offering their hand to a prolonged reflection on the emphatic view from within - a truly mature postural tension embodied in musically post-processed experiences.
Stephane Leonard«s first major publication since Hörtheater in 2004 proves to be one of those records that don«t make you think but understand.
Stephane Leonard - Lykkelig Dyr (2008)
by Frans de Waard - Vital Weekly 636
Its always great to see confidence. I never heard of Stephane Leonard, but Heilskabaal and naivsuper are confident enough to do a release that is both on LP and CD - the first real CD for naivsuper. That is surely confidence and I hope it works for them. Leonard released two solo recordings in 2003 and 2004, then learned how to program max/msp and then spent three years on doing field recordings and editing this album. I must admit that I fail to see all the confidence. Its by all means not a bad piece of work, but it doesn't shout 'original' all over it. Ten tracks of glitchy sounds and rhythms which sound very Fennesz like, even the 'pop' approach is used by Leonard, doesn't make him the next promise in microsound, click 'n cut or glitch land. Having said that, I must say that the album isn't bad either. Leonard plays some nice music, excellently produced, with tracks being short and to the point. Qualities that are sometimes forgotten by others, but which are necessary tools of the trade. If there wasn't a Fennesz around, and if he didn't release 'Endless Summer', 'Lykkelig Dyr' by Stephane Leonard could easily be the new king of all things glitch and pop, now he's one of the many fine servants of the trade.
Stephane Leonard - Crown Heights (2005 - 2007)
by Marc Weidenbaum - www.disquiet.com (november 6th 2007)
downstream / STEPHANE LEONARD SOUND DIARY MP3
A few seconds in - a few long seconds, during which one hears children playing, somewhere off in the distance - there is a guitar chord, plucked with vigor, and then left to fade out. Then comes the sudden insectoid whir of what could be a tape machine, and then another chord.
But don«t expect a third guitar chord. Not that the pace of those first two chords could in any way be interpreted to suggest a proper song is underway. They«re more like knowing acknowledgments of just how far this track, "Crown Heights" by the Berlin-based musician Stephane Leonard, is from a song. What "Crown Heights" is is an edited construct, in which the guitar is just another individual sound element, one among many, the vast majority of them "real world" sounds, like cars, voices and dog barks (MP3).
Many you might not even guess at, not without Leonard´s liner note. His description of his sonic materials is just as everyday-poetic as the resulting piece of music.
...
The brain«s desire to inflict a narrative on this free-flowing collage of sounds will be rewarded, but so too will be the ear«s attention to detail. On first listen, the disparity between quiet sections and loud ones can be shocking (like jump-out-of-your-seat shocking, at too high a volume). But on subsequent listens, one becomes accustomed to listening into the "silence" as Leonard describes it above, and the balance between foreground and background, between high and low, soft and loud, familiar and unfamiliar, slowly becomes erased. "Crown Heights" is a single-song release from the netlabel luvsound.org. (The file is also available as a massive, "lossless" FLAC and as an OGG.) More info on Leonard at his website, stephaneleonard.net.
Stephane Leonard - New York Short Stories - drawing exhibition at the gallery Invalid (2006)
by Lars Marstaller - www.buerkner9.de
Writing about Stephane Leonard always involves viewing his work in a larger artistic context. Besides being active in the fields of painting, video, graphic design, film, music and installation he is also exploring the artistic medium of drawing. This exhibition, however, concentrates on the latter. Today we see 23 drawings, produced during spring 2006, while Stephane Leonard was living in New York. In these drawings motifs are approached playfully and the idea always centres in abstraction, in transcending figure and gestalt. Reducing things to meaningful essence and ignoring superficial surfaces is one of the core elements of Stephane Leonard's work.
For a long time Stephane Leonard was reluctant to show his drawings to the public. He was drawing for himself alone. But today we get to see 23 pieces which tell of his life in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Done in a simplistic way throughout, the drawings sparse but expressive lines oscillate around a single motif. Often they seem fragile and skewed as if stormy winds had torn them.
Sometimes they are twisted and gravitate around a centre of power. Organic forms mix with emotions. Faces appear and sink back into the swirl of abstract bodies. Weight and lightness, motion and stasis reside on various layers and are subtly connected via swinging and breaking lines - adding larger dimensions to the motifs, opening up new positions and counter pointing the consciously devised air of naiveté with dance-like motions.
read an interview with Stephane Leonard about the exhibition (in german only) > interview
Stephane Leonard - TRi (2006)
by Marc Weidenbaum - www.disquiet.com
At home amid the ruptures of constantly shifting sonic data, Stephane Leonard has produced a three-track set for the Luv Sound netlabel (luvsound.org), titled tri, that is far more listenable than it should be. One track ("Trails 2," MP3) extends for 10 minutes into sharp if attenuated noise, the background static of a bad dream; midway through, something that sounds like a teletubby injects a scary-cute "la la la." It would be distracting were it not so perfectly placed that you look forward to it on each listen. The keeper, "Kreisstueck" (MP3), opens with real-world audio, the distant car horns like an orchestra tuning up, the wind rushing by a familiar rough texture to anyone who's dabbled in field recording, only to step suddenly through a window into something entirely synthetic. More info at stephaneleonard.net.
Stephane Leonard - Elegy (2005)
by Lars Marstaller - www.oscillate.it
Spheric, dreamy, wrapped in a warm blanket. That's how the new release by Stephane Leonard is stepping out into these cold winter days. After releasing his impressive third solo EP 'bon voyage' on plakatif.net Stephane's back with four sophisticated tracks. 'Elegy' - released on serein.co.uk - is merging field recs taken from all over the globe into a unique atmoshere that accompanies the days with great awareness. Out of his self coded max-msp software four sensitive universes stream which every time you listen to them expand further into the realms of imagination and thus take precise looks at the nature of the world around us. Humane universes that at no point tend to being soaked up by the golden showers of modern consumerism. With the perfectionists love to detail Stephane's sounds build bridges which hold for even the lost of characters. These elegies find soul in the bowels of the great machine.
Stephane Leonard - Hörtheater (2004, naivsuper) // Rating: 7.1
by www.theblackandwhitemag.com
Welcome to Stephane Leonard's world of abstract, deconstructed, post-ambient, electro music. Hörtheater seems to be birthed in a place where neither space or time exist. Like the complete score to the Star Trek series, only minus all hooks, this 10 track recording slowly drips its way from one piece to the next. It's difficult to find the right term here, as "post-rock" has some shape and form. This music is kind of like humans without bones. And as strange as that sounds, it's as strange as the music that is contained in Hörtheater...and I use the word "music" loosely. It's not suprising that Leonard is well versed in other forms of artistic expression, such as large scale drawings, illustrations for CD covers (many of which are used for the Naiv Super label), numerous short & experimental films and music videos, ect. His laptop based formula is a beatless array of textured layers, synthetic in nature, and sometimes offset by saxophone and violin. After 54 minutes of experimentalism, I've about had enough of it for the day, but Hörtheater is definitely a refreshing backdrop for the white noise at the office. This is new age music for the post-modern man.
by Lars Marstaller
If records were persons, Lykkelig Dyr would be someone navigating a maze of electro acoustic-playgrounds, someone farming data that is provided by the sensory surfaces of buzzing streets where familiar smiles crack wide open in their flickering fleeting transparency.
Lykkelig Dyr is focused, equipped with an electronically amplified awareness. The brooding boltzmann heat it envelopes reflects the never ending stream, its capillary thumping within myriads of family home labs flocked together like crystals - their whispers, their stories and dreams.
What makes Lykkelig Dyr«s 10 songs so exciting is their masterfully crisp and distinct sound structure. They dissect our collectives« mnemonic imageries as what they are: shiny cybernetic insects wrapped in paper-thin lucent gauze and enthrilled by suspicion. This stands in contrast to the songs« hovering planes of atmospheric mirages that form an enticing display of delicate sonic morph dynamics offering their hand to a prolonged reflection on the emphatic view from within - a truly mature postural tension embodied in musically post-processed experiences.
Stephane Leonard«s first major publication since Hörtheater in 2004 proves to be one of those records that don«t make you think but understand.
Stephane Leonard - Lykkelig Dyr (2008)
by Frans de Waard - Vital Weekly 636
Its always great to see confidence. I never heard of Stephane Leonard, but Heilskabaal and naivsuper are confident enough to do a release that is both on LP and CD - the first real CD for naivsuper. That is surely confidence and I hope it works for them. Leonard released two solo recordings in 2003 and 2004, then learned how to program max/msp and then spent three years on doing field recordings and editing this album. I must admit that I fail to see all the confidence. Its by all means not a bad piece of work, but it doesn't shout 'original' all over it. Ten tracks of glitchy sounds and rhythms which sound very Fennesz like, even the 'pop' approach is used by Leonard, doesn't make him the next promise in microsound, click 'n cut or glitch land. Having said that, I must say that the album isn't bad either. Leonard plays some nice music, excellently produced, with tracks being short and to the point. Qualities that are sometimes forgotten by others, but which are necessary tools of the trade. If there wasn't a Fennesz around, and if he didn't release 'Endless Summer', 'Lykkelig Dyr' by Stephane Leonard could easily be the new king of all things glitch and pop, now he's one of the many fine servants of the trade.
Stephane Leonard - Crown Heights (2005 - 2007)
by Marc Weidenbaum - www.disquiet.com (november 6th 2007)
downstream / STEPHANE LEONARD SOUND DIARY MP3
A few seconds in - a few long seconds, during which one hears children playing, somewhere off in the distance - there is a guitar chord, plucked with vigor, and then left to fade out. Then comes the sudden insectoid whir of what could be a tape machine, and then another chord.
But don«t expect a third guitar chord. Not that the pace of those first two chords could in any way be interpreted to suggest a proper song is underway. They«re more like knowing acknowledgments of just how far this track, "Crown Heights" by the Berlin-based musician Stephane Leonard, is from a song. What "Crown Heights" is is an edited construct, in which the guitar is just another individual sound element, one among many, the vast majority of them "real world" sounds, like cars, voices and dog barks (MP3).
Many you might not even guess at, not without Leonard´s liner note. His description of his sonic materials is just as everyday-poetic as the resulting piece of music.
...
The brain«s desire to inflict a narrative on this free-flowing collage of sounds will be rewarded, but so too will be the ear«s attention to detail. On first listen, the disparity between quiet sections and loud ones can be shocking (like jump-out-of-your-seat shocking, at too high a volume). But on subsequent listens, one becomes accustomed to listening into the "silence" as Leonard describes it above, and the balance between foreground and background, between high and low, soft and loud, familiar and unfamiliar, slowly becomes erased. "Crown Heights" is a single-song release from the netlabel luvsound.org. (The file is also available as a massive, "lossless" FLAC and as an OGG.) More info on Leonard at his website, stephaneleonard.net.
Stephane Leonard - New York Short Stories - drawing exhibition at the gallery Invalid (2006)
by Lars Marstaller - www.buerkner9.de
Writing about Stephane Leonard always involves viewing his work in a larger artistic context. Besides being active in the fields of painting, video, graphic design, film, music and installation he is also exploring the artistic medium of drawing. This exhibition, however, concentrates on the latter. Today we see 23 drawings, produced during spring 2006, while Stephane Leonard was living in New York. In these drawings motifs are approached playfully and the idea always centres in abstraction, in transcending figure and gestalt. Reducing things to meaningful essence and ignoring superficial surfaces is one of the core elements of Stephane Leonard's work.
For a long time Stephane Leonard was reluctant to show his drawings to the public. He was drawing for himself alone. But today we get to see 23 pieces which tell of his life in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Done in a simplistic way throughout, the drawings sparse but expressive lines oscillate around a single motif. Often they seem fragile and skewed as if stormy winds had torn them.
Sometimes they are twisted and gravitate around a centre of power. Organic forms mix with emotions. Faces appear and sink back into the swirl of abstract bodies. Weight and lightness, motion and stasis reside on various layers and are subtly connected via swinging and breaking lines - adding larger dimensions to the motifs, opening up new positions and counter pointing the consciously devised air of naiveté with dance-like motions.
read an interview with Stephane Leonard about the exhibition (in german only) > interview
Stephane Leonard - TRi (2006)
by Marc Weidenbaum - www.disquiet.com
At home amid the ruptures of constantly shifting sonic data, Stephane Leonard has produced a three-track set for the Luv Sound netlabel (luvsound.org), titled tri, that is far more listenable than it should be. One track ("Trails 2," MP3) extends for 10 minutes into sharp if attenuated noise, the background static of a bad dream; midway through, something that sounds like a teletubby injects a scary-cute "la la la." It would be distracting were it not so perfectly placed that you look forward to it on each listen. The keeper, "Kreisstueck" (MP3), opens with real-world audio, the distant car horns like an orchestra tuning up, the wind rushing by a familiar rough texture to anyone who's dabbled in field recording, only to step suddenly through a window into something entirely synthetic. More info at stephaneleonard.net.
Stephane Leonard - Elegy (2005)
by Lars Marstaller - www.oscillate.it
Spheric, dreamy, wrapped in a warm blanket. That's how the new release by Stephane Leonard is stepping out into these cold winter days. After releasing his impressive third solo EP 'bon voyage' on plakatif.net Stephane's back with four sophisticated tracks. 'Elegy' - released on serein.co.uk - is merging field recs taken from all over the globe into a unique atmoshere that accompanies the days with great awareness. Out of his self coded max-msp software four sensitive universes stream which every time you listen to them expand further into the realms of imagination and thus take precise looks at the nature of the world around us. Humane universes that at no point tend to being soaked up by the golden showers of modern consumerism. With the perfectionists love to detail Stephane's sounds build bridges which hold for even the lost of characters. These elegies find soul in the bowels of the great machine.
Stephane Leonard - Hörtheater (2004, naivsuper) // Rating: 7.1
by www.theblackandwhitemag.com
Welcome to Stephane Leonard's world of abstract, deconstructed, post-ambient, electro music. Hörtheater seems to be birthed in a place where neither space or time exist. Like the complete score to the Star Trek series, only minus all hooks, this 10 track recording slowly drips its way from one piece to the next. It's difficult to find the right term here, as "post-rock" has some shape and form. This music is kind of like humans without bones. And as strange as that sounds, it's as strange as the music that is contained in Hörtheater...and I use the word "music" loosely. It's not suprising that Leonard is well versed in other forms of artistic expression, such as large scale drawings, illustrations for CD covers (many of which are used for the Naiv Super label), numerous short & experimental films and music videos, ect. His laptop based formula is a beatless array of textured layers, synthetic in nature, and sometimes offset by saxophone and violin. After 54 minutes of experimentalism, I've about had enough of it for the day, but Hörtheater is definitely a refreshing backdrop for the white noise at the office. This is new age music for the post-modern man.