Leslie Winer

Leslie Winer emerged in the early '80s as a high-profile fashion model before she fully indulged her ardor for making music. After she made a series of collaborative connections later in the '80s, the poet and musician offered her full-length debut with Witch, a showcase for her detached yet penetrating observations and knack for combining dub, dancehall, and hip-hop. Although some of its tracks were played as early as 1990 by well-known radio DJs such as John Peel and Chris Douridas, the album wasn't granted a proper commercial release until three years later. Its slow-motion genre collisions, rich with heady atmospheres and low end, were nonetheless identified by outlets such as NME as a formative trip-hop recording. Winer's output before and since then has been credited to an assortment of pseudonyms and released in either limited or inconspicuous fashion. The 2021 anthology When I Hit You -- You'll Feel It has provided her output with its highest platform yet. The Boston-born Winer developed an interest in poetry and music at an early age -- she started playing piano as a child -- and in her late teens moved to New York City to attend the School for Visual Arts. In New York, she struck up a friendship with William S. Burroughs (whom she had contacted to visit her literature class) and became known as a model through associations with Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, and Jean Paul Gaultier, among others. By the mid-'80s, Winer was gravitating back to music, acquiring high-tech gear and linking with Kevin Mooney (Adam and the Ants, Wide Boy Awake). Winer and Mooney formed Max, an act that debuted with "Little Ghosts," a single issued in 1987, the same year the duo collaborated with Chrysalis labelmate Sinéad O'Connor on "Don't Call Me Joe," off The Lion and the Cobra. Winer subsequently worked with Mooney and Karl Bonnie (Renegade Soundwave), along with the likes of Jah Wobble and Helen Terry, on the album Witch, originally credited to ©. White label copies pressed in 1990 received strong support from BBC DJ John Peel and KCRW's Chris Douridas, and a 12" single derived from the sessions was commercially available in 1991, but it wasn't until 1993 that Witch was officially issued by Rhythm King sublabel Transglobal. Between the creation and proper release of Witch, Winer was also featured on material by Holger Hiller and Book of Love. Later in the decade, she appeared on albums by Jon Hassell and Bomb the Bass, and recorded her second album, Spider, which in 1999 was available only from Helmut Lang. Winer's public musical activity in the 2000s was limited to a collaboration with Mekon. Her output increased the following decade, whether it was in association with Mekon, Diamond Version, Christopher Chaplin, or Jay Glass Dubs, in tandem with either Christophe Van Huffel or CM von Hausswolff, or more obviously under her own name or initials. The 2010 download and cassette release & That Dead Horse gathered stray tracks Winer had uploaded to the Internet. In 2013, Winer liberated a shelved project for major-label Geffen, 3 Bags Full, and reissued Spider, both as downloads. Four years later, she issued Huncke Readings, an audiovisual work in tribute to writer Herbert Huncke. Earlier, the Wormhole label had anthologized Winer's recordings with &c, but that small-scale release was supplanted in 2021 by the multi-format and more widely distributed When I Hit You -- You'll Feel It, put together by Light in the Attic.
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