Leslie Winer’s Witch, first heard in 1990 as a white-label LP but not released legitimately until three years later, rates as a highly-esteemed document, one regarded by some as a lost classic. A large part of the lingering allure relates directly to its status as a harbinger of Trip Hop; while that relationship is surely evident upon listening, Witch’s nine tracks, out now on limited edition vinyl from Superior Viaduct, portray a narrative that’s much more complex.
Though she quickly and understandably bristled against the designation, Leslie Winer is easily most renowned, outside of modeling circles anyway, as the “grandmother of trip hop.” That bold title was awarded to her by England’s New Musical Express in response to a record that’s considerable impact on individual listeners suffered complications of exposure and sadly never translated into a big splash.
Indeed, the late great Brit DJ John Peel was moved enough to play cuts on his radio show from the original issue, with that white-label curiosity credited not to Winer but to ©, a copyright symbol with an ouroboros (or for those rusty on their ancient Greek lingo, a snake devouring its own tail) as the circle around the c.
NME fervor aside, Winer was consistently plagued by label ineptitude. Though she’d continued to make music in the intervening time, until Witch was rediscovered at the front of the c section of Peel’s formidable collection, its owner reportedly cataloging it as “the definition of a hidden gem,” her artistic fate was mainly obscurity.
Undeserved obscurity, at that; while Winer’s connection to the trip hop scene is likely to remain her largest asset in escaping future neglect, it’s far from the only card in her deck. In fact, where she came from is just as interesting as what she predicted. Quick capsules mention the five years she spent as a supermodel and instigator of inappropriate nightclubbing behavior during the ‘80s. However, Winer has stated she hated modeling work, and learning of her numerous activities surrounding it has proven much more intriguing.
For starters, in the late-‘70s Winer hightailed it from the suburbs of Massachusetts to NYC in order to attend the School of Visual Arts. Through a neighbor she was introduced not only to William S. Burroughs but also to that grand Beat rascal Herbert Huncke. In the early-‘80s, she was also romantically linked to painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, and by the middle of the decade she was in London, where she connected with filmmaker John Mayberry and musician Kevin Mooney, ex-bassist for the punk-era Adam and the Ants.
Mooney’s mid-‘80s outfit with John Keogh was called Max, and Winer assisted with lyrics and visuals. I’ve not heard ‘em, but Max did issue some recordings, and Mooney and Winer also co-wrote “Just Call Me Joe” for Sinéad O’Connor. She began crafting her own material shortly thereafter. First was “Kind of Easy” with Renegade Soundwave’s Karl Bonnie, and that song was swiftly followed by Witch.
Winer’s London sojourn might seem like an appropriate prologue for her chapter in a trip hop storyline that includes subsequent episodes by Massive Attack, Tricky, and Portishead, and that’s not an inaccurate observation. But on hearing, I was heavily struck by Witch’s depth as a New York record. Much of the reason derives from the deft use of hip-hop elements, and while hip-hop obviously put the hop in trip hop, Winer’s usage here, rather than borrowed from a distance, connects as the byproduct of an eyewitness account.
Her involvement with Basquiat brought her into contact with the early days of that movement (she also knew Dondi White and Rammellzee), and perhaps because she’d been exposed to hip-hop for the better part of ten years, Winer’s in no hurry to unveil its influence. Instead, opener “He Was” displays a dub orientation but minus any heavy-handedness, with repeated single-note piano employed to superb effect.
But it’s through her recitation, half whispered and tangibly sleepy (or maybe stoned) that the New York aspect, partially post-Beat but also related to the Downtown scene of the period, really asserts itself. And the angle of Winer’s words, while youthful and non-academic in nature is still rooted in solid poetic stuff.
In retrospect Witch is largely tasteful, a result somewhat due to a lack of poetry-slam egregiousness. Winer makes no attempt to disguise her displeasure with much of the topics she broaches, but in place of rant (which always has the potential to become mere bluster) she’s mastered the skill of underplaying (please compare anything here to poetry-slam maestro Bob Holman’s contemporaneous, and to be fair, not terrible “1990” for evidence of the crucial difference in poetic styles).
Second track “Flove” features a lengthy instrumental passage, which really emphasizes Winer’s dedication to more than just her writing. The entirety of the cut is assuredly musical, holding passages that register as ten years ahead of their time. And in terms of her words, she frequently focuses upon repeated phrases, her choices stimulating as opposed to stale.
It’s via “N1 Ear” that the hip-hop flavor really emerges. The cut utilizes an emphatic beat reminding these ears of Public Enemy’s debut, but as stated, Winer doesn’t try too hard to impress. After an establishing minute, the track finds her spewing a righteous and still relevant stream of gender-related thoughts (it briefly brought Jayne Cortez to my mind) that culminates in a savvy nod to Gil Scott-Heron’s killer “Whitey on the Moon,” her tactic broadening the statement to include (again still pertinent) race and class issues.
And if “Flove” uses lyrical repetition to fine ends, “N1 Ear” expands the motif by layering the cyclical hunks of syllables as Winer’s presence is increasingly but subtly felt. “The Boy Who Used 2 Whistle” unravels a sturdy techno-funk bed as she blends her spoken-word approach with hints of an R&B sensibility to widen Witch’s stylistic reach without disruption. This enlargement of range is even more apparent (and successful) on “John Says,” which adds acoustic strumming to a reggae-based song of achy remembering.
Along with “N1 Ear,” the extended “5” is the album’s strongest piece, though it also reveals Winer’s weaknesses. It offers some of the most effective (i.e. least dated) sampling I’ve heard on a non-specifically hip-hop release from the era; not only the capturing of voices (here a child’s), but also shrewd lifts of the gruff guitar from CSN&Y’s “Tin Soldiers” (in this case not necessarily a sample) and toward the end, the chiming string-work of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What it’s Worth” (nearly a decade prior to Public Enemy’s use of same).
As said, Winer’s voice grows in assertiveness to match her increased flow of imagery, and for the most part her words continue to hold substantial appeal. On “5,” she does occasionally slip into the less-rewarding post-beat street-poet mode, here regurgitating Big Business slogans (“Miller’s made the American way,” “put a tiger in your tank”) and checking off the names of oil companies (we all know them) in what’s essentially an anti-war piece.
Thankfully though, across Witch Winer effectively avoids the excessive verbiage (her voice drops out entirely from the final three minutes of “5”) and general phony baloney that ruins the majority of contempo street-level poetics. And “1nce Upon a Time,” which defies the odds to provide a very useful referencing of the Peter Gunn theme, begins the album’s gradual winding down.
The combination of mid-tempo melodiousness, acoustic guitar, dub technique, and a smoothly crooned chorus helps “Skin” to encompass much of record’s essence in a nutshell while still managing to sound distinctive, and “Dream 1” ends the LP by enveloping Winer’s voice in thick dub aura as a thread of smartly conceived, and at one point slyly humorous, samples accompanies her; while stopping well short of the mellow, it serves as a relaxing finale.
One listen to Witch undeniably shows that Leslie Winer was at the start of something, but it also registers as a terrific closing statement from the end of a great bohemian era. Playing this in rotation with Laurie’s Home of the Brave and Material’s Seven Souls delivered a nice kick in the trousers, and that it’s currently available on vinyl is a swell development.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
