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Flavour Has No Name

How else could we follow-up Ulrich Schnaus's "Strangely Isolated Place" album?? Hanno Leichtman returns with this brilliant, deep, textured and highly evocative second album "Flavour Has No Name". Leichtman's berlin studio is a friendly place. you imagine it in half-light, scattered cushions, open bottles of wine and an opulence of form welcoming his family of collaborators and friends to dip into his world of shimmering pop. "flavour has no name" sets out the agenda in a multi-coloured display of variation and a love of a melody that will not remove itself from your mind. this is, simply put, a perfect pop record. The opening glow of "inside your heaven" slowly blossoms into the most sultry, seductive piece of music you'll hear this summer. Hanno's longtime collaborator Justine Electra drawing you into a world of permanent twilight and reflection with her sublime, honey-soaked vocal while shimmering Rhodes keys lilt away at the hint of other possibilities. The possibilities of love. Snapped into another reality with a mesh of telephone exchanges and ringing tones humming into existence, you wake up to the strangely pacifying voice of Tarwater / To Rococo Rot member Ronald Lippok on the first of two collaborations included here. "Ghost Boy" states it's intent perfectly, amid the cacophony of technology and mass communication Ronald drawls as Hanno's squashed electroid beat seeps itself in elements of dub and lullaby. Next up is the extraordinary Christoff Kurzmann, head honcho at austria's charizma imprint and all round musical maverick here contributing his immediately off-kilter vocal to the simply amazing "disquiet". Hanno lays the foundations with a plock of percussion and a squashed electronic undercurrent, the vocal left raw and untarnished with all of its vulnerabilities and imperfections left intact, a beautiful shiver of christoff's clarinet and shuffling percussion turning this moment into an anthem of misplaced identity and anxious existance. Lali puna's vocalist valerie trebeljahr collaborates with hanno on 12" track "turn on switch off" which is included here in all its glorious form. a 5 minute stretch of pop bliss complete with simmering drum loops and shimmering keys, interjected with valerie's flowing, almost whispered lullaby narrative and a spine-tingling cascade of harps that flips your stomach inside out. just lovely. The result across these amazing tracks, to take us back to the beginning, is an album of pure future-vision pop genius. Essential.