Leander

There are two artists with this name: 1) Hungarian metal band from Budapest 2) German indie duo. 1) Leander is a Hungarian metal band from Budapest. At first the multi-faced talent, Leander Köteles started the band as his solo project in 2009, where he did his first video, „Csak Te / Only You” which led to a great success in Hungary over the internet. After hearing about this video Attila Vörös – a young and well-known guitarist in Hungary, who later joined the legendary band from Seattle, called Nevermore – had responded to Leander Köteles via the internet and had joined the project later on. In the beginning Attila only had done some guest solos for Leander Köteles - in the songs „Viharom Tavaszom / My Storm, My Spring” and „Ördög Naplója / Devil’s Diary”), but later they countinued the project as a duo more than succesfully. During this time they wrote a cover to the worldwide known Hungarian classic, „Szomorú Vasárnap / Gloomy Sunday” which was written by Rezső Seress. The duo also did a cover to the American pop star, Rihanna’s „Only Girly”, and did their first own material together, called „Szívidomár / Heart Tamer” which all three had a great success and a record amount of views and reviews. While Attila was touring in the States, Leander Köteles did a cover to Lady Gaga’s „Bad Romance” which was probably the most viewd and succesfull video int he project’s history at that time. In September/2010 a new twist came to the project, after doing a sold-out show in the capital city – with nearly 600 people in a club that was designed for approx 150 - which made them decide forming a band insted of going on as a project. After this show the guitarist József „Jozzy” Takács (Wendigo/String Theory) and the drummer Márk Maczák joined the band, which no longer was a project anymore. The band got named Leander, since the project itself had done such a great job already under this name. The first real debut was a mini tour in March/2011, where all the shows were completely sold-out, and where Leander did a show in the capitol city for approx 900 people. Soon after the drummer, Márk Maczák decided to leave the band due to his studies. He was replaced by Béla Budai who’d been playing with Attila Vörös in a PanterA tribute band, called Vulgar Display Of Cover for a while. Fortunately this change did not affect on the band’s quickly raising success which was shown by all the gigs, highly succesfull festival shows, and another capital city show in Zöld Pardon – which is highly recognized place in Hungary – where more than 1200 people were singing the songs and having fun. In July, 2011 the band got signed by Sony Music, and booked a 2 month length tour over the whole country and a show in London. And this is all just the beginning… Official web page: http://leandermusic.com/. 2) Brothers Daniel and Lars Kranholdt founded Leander in 2005 after years of personal musical growth in north-east Germany. With an early interest in electronic music, Daniel started gigging with a singer in Hamburg, and Lars' attention was focused on electro-acoustic music. With Lars’ strengths with songwriting and guitar complimenting Daniel's talented beats, melody and effects, Leander was an obvious fit showcasing soft and distorted guitars, broken beats and fragile singing. Being geographically separated (as Daniel lives in Stuttgart and Lars in Hamburg), the two released their self-titled debut EP after two weeks of collaborative work. This warranted a considerable amount of attention and paved the way for work including: “Galaxie 500” on Finderpop (Japan), “Soundtrack For Your Wedding” on Aerotone (Germany) as well as remixes for artists including: Au Revoir Simone, Norton, MAI and Superboy. Within two months they went on to record their album Pass Fail. While the songwriting and recording process is only done by the two brothers, Leander is supported by a additonal guitarist and drummer in concert. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.