Stephan Laubner occupies a particular position in underground electronic music. As STL, he has spent the better part of two decades releasing exclusively through Something — the label he operates himself — from his home in the Harz highlands of northern Germany, almost entirely removed from the circuits of visibility that define most producers’ careers. His reputation has grown in spite of, or perhaps because of, this studied indifference to platform.
Take Me To Your Leader is a sixteen-track triple vinyl album and, by the standards of the Something catalogue, a considerable statement. The record covers Laubner’s characteristic terrain — eerie, extended leftfield house shadowed by X-Files atmospherics, acid, dub techno and raw groove — while using the album format to show how much range that terrain actually contains.
M-Brainiac, Lunar Magic, Space Warriors and Snug Acid represent the psychedelic house in its most fully realised form: wide-open, unhurried, hypnotic. Fat Sunday and Paperboy bring warmth and forward momentum. Woven throughout are four DJ-friendly loops — Loop A, B, C and E — functioning as connective tissue between longer compositions, keeping the vinyl-mixing instinct alive across six sides.
So Bin Ich Dem Leben Naeher opens things deliberately and Standard Fried Stir closes them with the same unhurried conviction. In between, Laubner does what he always does: builds a world, then lets you inhabit it.
Take Me To Your Leader is scheduled for release in July 2026 via Something. Listen to and Pre-order a vinyl copy from Inverted Audio Record Store.
TRACKLIST
1. So Bin Ich Dem Leben Naeher
2. Ey Snooper
3. Loop A
4. M-Brainiac
5. Lunar Magic
6. Loop B
7. Now
8. Verlinked
9. Loop C
10. Fat Sunday
11. Low Thang
12. Space Warriors
13. Snug Acid
14. Loop E
15. Paperboy
16. Standard Fried Stir
