Witch

Leslie Winer's 'Witch' first appeared on white label vinyl in 1990. The results of two years of writing, looping, editing and experimenting, Leslie, alongside her collaborators (including Renegade Soundwave's Karl Bonnie among others) had created what is now widely considered to be a lost classic.

Assuming the artist name © ('I was thinking about intellectual property as a concept and the general freakiness of the notion of owning words'), Leslie set out to upend lazy misogynist preconceptions, the plain white packaging giving no clues as to who was behind it all. Her words to 'N1 Ear' spell this out; '...;and what I look like is more important than what I do.' As a 'reluctant model for five junkie years,' she had been photographed by everyone from Helmut Newton to Pierre & Gilles, appearing on the covers of magazines from Mademoiselle and Vogue (French, Italian and Australian) to The Face. As Leslie noted in a recent interview, 'I'm also a former nasty alcoholic and former Tampax user, each for more than five years and with considerably more enthusiasm.'

Signing to Rhythm King subsidiary Transglobal, 'Witch' got lost in the machine...; and by the time of its retail release in 1993, Leslie had already moved on. Described by the John Peel Archives as 'the definition of a hidden gem' and 'trip hop before there was trip hop,' according to the BBC, the album 'Witch' still sounded years ahead of itself.

Remastered in 2012 by Denis Blackham, The Wormhole's digital edition adds four remixes from the rare 1991 Transglobal single, 'N1 Ear'/'Dream 1', plus Leslie's first solo recording, written with Karl Bonnie and previously available on impossible-to-find white label - 1989's 'Kind of Easy'. 'Witch' appears digitally in advance of 'Leslie Winer &c.' - a compact compendium of Leslie's music from 1990 to today, scheduled for an October release; and '10 Pomes Fin (Irish Wristwatch)', a book of Leslie's poetry, currently in production.