Published
Wed, May 26, 2021, 23:14
- The 16-track collection, When I Hit You—You'll Feel It, is out on July 23rd.
A 16-track anthology of music by downtown figure and trip hop pioneer Leslie Winer will come out on Light In The Attic in late July.
Born in Boston to a teenage mother and sold for $10,000 in a black-market adoption, nothing about Winer's story is conventional. She moved to New York City for art school and befriended William S. Burroughs and Jean-Michel Basquiat, the latter of whom she lived with on and off. She was also a muse to Jean-Paul Gaultier—who referred to Winer as "the first androgynous model—and appeared in campaigns for Valentino, Christian Dior and Yohji Yamamoto.
But music was Winer's primary mode of creative expression. Her debut album Witch, completed in 1990 and released in 1993, remains a cult classic. It featured collaborations with the likes of Jah Wobble, Culture Club's Helen Terry and Karl Bonnie of Renegade Soundwave and foreshadowed the trip hop sound with its mix of beats, sampling and dancehall basslines.
When I Hit You—You’ll Feel It goes beyond Witch and celebrates Winer's unique body of work up to the present, including contributions from Wobble, Bonnie and Terry, collaborations with Jon Hassell and Jay Glass Dubs and previously unreleased material. The remastered collection includes a new interview with Winer as well as an essay by Louis Chude-Sokei. It'll come out digitally on July 23rd and on CD and across three separate double-LP editions on July 30th.
LITA will also put out an accompanying 7-inch featuring Leslie Winer and Maxwell Sterling's cover of Tim Buckley's "Once I Was," backed by the original version. (Sterling recently released the RA-recommended album Turn Of Phrase.)
The newly-remastered Witch track "Skin" is available to stream or download now. LITA has also released the rare video, directed by John Maybury, whose other credits include Sinéad O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U" and Pet Shop Boys' "West End Girls."
Tracklist
When I Hit You—You'll Feel It
A1 When I Was Walt Whitman
A2 N1 Ear
A3 Tree
A4 Jon Hassell & Bluescreen - Personals feat. Leslie Winer
B1 Dream 1
B2 Purity Supreme - Dunderhead
B3 The Boy Who Used 2 Whistle
B4 Hold On Postcards
C1 He Was
C2 RoundUp Ready
C3 Skin
C4 Box
D1 This Blank Action feat. Leslie Winer
D2 Battle Porn
D3 Leslie Winer & Jay Glass Dubs - Woodshedded
D4 Leslie Winer & Mari G. Mooney - Fragment #2
Once I Was (7-inch)
A Leslier Winer & Maxwell Sterling - Once I Was
B Tim Buckley - Once I Was
Light In The Attic will release When I Hit You—You'll Feel It digitally on July 23rd and physically on July 30th. The Once I Was 7-inch is out July 30th on vinyl with the digital to follow on September 16th, 2021.
