014 STEPHANE LEONARD - LYKKELIG DYR

tracklist:
A // 01. Dystopia 03:07 / 02. Brooklyn Fieber 05:14 / 03. Eh und Jäh 03:54 / 04. Ific Shores 03:19 / 05. 333 und 3 04:08
B // 01. Freihändig 03:49 / 02. More Tea For Keith 04:23 / 03. Bells* 05:28 / 04. Rock´n´Roll Charity 03:24 / 05. Impossibly Possible 02:33
* voice on ´Bells´ by Eva

"Lykkelig Dyr" (Norwegian, meaning: Happy Animal) is released on vinyl by the Dutch label Heilskabaal and on CD by naivsuper.

"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."
(Lars Marstaller, 2008)

"The album could probably be described as a hyperventilating harsh electronic yet dreamy spacescape... But I am not sure if that makes any sense.
The research and recordings took me over 3 years and I am happy to finally have it finished. After my first 2 solo releases in 2003 and 2004 I knew that I had to get a completely new perspective on writing and playing music. Instead of guitars and keyboards I started to experiment with synthetic sound modulations, manipulations and artificial sound creation. I learned to work and script with max/msp and started using the computer as an instrument.
After various trips into different electronic genres I finally returned to the use of analogue material. During many journeys I collected and recorded loads of field recordings and inspiration from music and sounds I have never heard before. From the crickets of the jungle in Thailand to the wind in the Canadian forests to Mariachi hip hop and Caribbean dub from the streets of Brooklyn, NY - everything left a trace behind.
On Lykkelig Dyr I travel through different sound rooms, weave stories sometimes based on a single tone and tumble in between music traditions and present positions in the electroacoustic field.
I am interested in challenge the hearing habits and confront myself as well as the interested listener with a unique and strange language. A language that can say more than words, a language that describes the world around me more precise, less idealistic and less compressed than a picture would ever be able to.
From loud high pitched beeps and distorted white noise to soft and small soundscapes to rhythmic glitch and various field recordings, they all become one on the record serving a higher purpose, hopefully without losing their individuality.
I sceptically question the structure of a composition and try to confuse the listener about when and what will be the next little sound eruption or even explosion. Lykkelig Dyr can be seen as the starting point of a journey and would then function as the table of contents for upcoming albums."
(Stephane Leonard, 2007)

REVIEWS

http://earlabs.org

RATED: 9.1 / 10

A new collaborative release between the Dutch Heilskabaal Records and the German Naivsuper: Stephane Leonard - Lykkelig Dyr. An album like a crowded street, a city on the run, a person in recovery.
You sometimes get to the point where you like something but you cannot explain what it is exactly. I now arrived at one of those points: The Lykkelig Dyr by Stephane Leonard really grabs my attention and I want to keep listening, but I can really explain what in the album does this.
It took Leonard about 3 years to create this musical work. After his first two releases that where in a more traditional way, with guitar and keyboards, he needed a change. The result is something I would describe as ambient noise. With eye for detail layers of noise are produced, but at such a low level that you wouldn't really call this noise.
Stephane Leonard really knows to work with these layers of noise sometimes making rhythmical pieces from it as for Brooklyn Fieber. At first hearing this does not appear, but after a few repeats these subtleties appear from the at first noisy structures.
I think the approach of this music isn't that far away from someone like Fennesz though the result is much more noisy and cold.
There is one song on here that really got me and that is Bells that has some Dutch vocals in it. It sounds as if someone is talking to you in your dreams. What is being told is not completely coming through (even though I am Dutch), but you sure want to hear it. At first the lady is really talking to you, but later on she appears to be fading away. That while the dream keeps going on. You can't really place what is happening.
As I already said about this album: I can't really explain why I like this, but it's a damn fine one. One of my favorite albums so far this year. So do yourself a pleasure and go grab this limited cd or vinyl release. (Sietse van Erve)

Tokafi

Painter, Composer and Filmmaker Stephane Leonard has lived in Berlin for almost his entire life. And yet, on his latest full-length "Lykkelig Dyr", a spell-binding sleepwalk between soft Noise and beautifully brittle Sound Art, the intensity of Germany´s inspiring capital has all but completely been replaced by the influence of other cities: "´Lykkelig Dyr´ was mostly recorded in Bremen and Brooklyn", Leonard explains, "The album took more than 3 years to grow - from 2004 to 2007 - during some of that time I was still studying in Bremen in the north of Germany and in 2005 I moved to Brooklyn, New York for about a year where I also worked a lot on the album. New York was a huge influence" It certainly was: "Lykkelig Dyr" marks yet another important step towards a mature and organically synthetic approach.( Tobias Fischer)

read the whole article > here

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.

aufabwegen.de

Ein zart tupfendes Electronica-Album legt Stephane Leonard vor. Schon das Coverartwork der CD-Edition spricht Bände: Jason Yates (Black Dice u.a.) lässt sich die Typo zitternd vor einem spielerisch-zackigen Quadrathintergrund abheben. Die Verhältnisse von Vorder- und Hintergrund sind nie ganz klar. So auch in der Musik, die mal selbstsicherer Pop ist und dann fragmenthaftes Experiment. Nie aber plätschert Lykkelig Dyr ("Lächerlich teuer", Danske Lopen?), sondern bleibt immer gefasst und konkret in jeder Farbgebung. (Zipo)

Wonderful Wooden Reasons

3 years in the preparation, this new album from Berlin based musician / artist Stephane Leonard makes some interesting alchemy.
   On reading the press release you'd be forgiven for expecting a cornucopia of exotic aural snapshots from the varied locations and happenings that Leonard recorded for use on this project. Not so as Lykkelig Dyr reveals itself to be a much more conventional concoction. Don't get me wrong this is still a psychedelic soundclash albeit one operating within distinctly musical boundaries, the most obvious being Glitch.
   Like much of the best music to emerge from that scene Leonard's rhythmical manage to just stay on the obtuse side of being both melodic and rhythmic. These clusters of tones and bleeps spattering themselves across a hard backdrop of processed sounds. It's the composition that brings the whole to life though.  Slightly cold and unemotional Leonard's sound palette may be but in his hands they are mixed into a sinuously relentless concoction capable of transmuting these base elements into pure (digital) gold.

www.octopus-enligne.com

Musicien, artiste graphique et réalisateur de films basé à Berlin, Stéphane Leonard a mis trois ans pour pondre cet introspectif et précieux Lykkelig Dyr. Mélange de matières électro-acoustiques grésillantes méticuleusement amplifiées et d'un tissage atmosphérique dérivant selon les désirs morphiques naturalistes du compositeur, Lykkelig Dyr dévoile une multitude d'environnements organiques soniques et remuants, dans lesquels les manifestations sonores mises en exergue (les points d'orgue tintant d"Ific shores", les bruits de cloche sur "More tea for Keith", les gargouillis métalliques de "Rock'roll charity") viennent témoigner d'une micro activité dynamique envoûtante, saisie sur le vif. Comme si notre ouïe transperçait une ruche bourdonnante, on suit avec intérêt les différentes phases de cette captation, les phases de repos et les recrudescences manifestes, attentif à la posture entomologique qui semble être celle de Stéphane Léonard.

les-passions-de-fab.skynetblogs.be

Stephane Leonard, en fanfare
Les amis de Stephane Leonard sur MySpace attirent déjà l´attention. Entre Antonin Artaud et Lars Von Trier en passant par... Leonard de Vinci (à quand la page Meetic ?), le musicien et cinéaste berlinois tente l´aventure écartelée entre bruitisme frondeur (quelque part du coté de Yasuano Tone) et ambient inquiète (Janek Schaefer, par là). Et là aussi, c´est notre attention qui pivote, attirée tel l´aimant par ses méditations rugueuses entre Fennesz et Svarte Greiner.

The Silent Ballet

... An artist and teacher as well as musician, Leonard has made a record of impressionistic sounds that float around in an amorphous haze before occasionally coalescing into a coherent pattern for a while before dispersing again. Overall, it has a very urban, industrial feel to it - not in the sense of a collaboration of Beyonce and Nurse With Wound, but rather the sounds of factories, building sites, of the spaces between towerblocks and the despairing alienation of the buildings themselves.
What's refreshing to this reviewer's ears is that despite working in a crowded and increasingly homogenous genre, Leonard has made a rather effective work. There's a lot of music produced on laptops for a small audience and much of it lacks the scope of Lykkelig Dyr. It's difficult to say exactly what makes the difference - it's like trying to compare contemporary abstract art or maybe why one mountain is better than another. At first, I was put off by the MySpace friends which meant I didn't want to like this album (shallow and prejudiced, yes, but on such minor details are affections often won and lost). I was expecting - nay, hoping - to find it a badly constructed, ill-conceived piece peddling the same sounds and ideas I've heard before. Instead, I discover an album that is, on the one hand, low-key and understated and on the other full of sensory triggers that paint pictures in the mind. Stephane Leonard may be quite handy with a brush but he's also proving to be a real artist with sound. (Jeremy Bye)

www.gonzocircus.com

Een doolhof van akoestiek, een reis door geluidskamers, een elektro-akoestische speeltuin, of een taal die het gehoor uitdaagt. Aan conceptuele verklaringen geen gebrek op deze lp vol geluidsonderzoek. Helaas is de lectuur beter te verteren dan de bijhorende, ongetwijfeld weldoordachte, composities. Leonard verzamelt veldopnames en bewerkt ze computerkundig tot microfragmenten, die vervolgens opnieuw aan elkaar worden geplakt tot knisperende klankcollages. We hebben al een kast vol gelijkaardige experimenten, en ´Lykkelig Dyr´ is de zoveelste druppel in een ruisende zee. Alle lof voor de arbeidsintensieve vlijt, maar we worden hier niet warm of koud van. Het idee van een enorme zwerm sprinkhanen die neerstrijkt in een overvolle winkelstraat spreekt ons nochtans aan. Tenminste het echte spul, niet de computersimulatie. 

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 - ... . 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. (Frans de Waard)