paniq

paniq is Leonard Ritter, an independent electronic music artist from Hamburg, Germany. His style is hard to define, yet unique; ranging from pure acapella over acid hip hop to full-blown psychedelic pop, he has always melted styles together which have been previously thought to be incompatible. Some of paniq's influences can be clearly heard in his tracks: The Prodigy, Infected Mushroom, Der Dritte Raum or Johann Sebastian Bach, to only name a few.

Getting interested in computer programming at the age of 9, it was impossible to separate him from computers ever since. At the age of 12, secretly toying with the studio equipment of his mother, a well-known german children music and radio play producer, he got entranced in the world of sequencers and synthesizers. Since sampling hardware was exorbitant at the time, paniq resorted to programming beats using a so-called Tracker program, an early ancestor of todays software-based studio environments.

1997, when the world wide web found its way into his family's living room, he started publishing his music online, and has never stopped doing so ever since. He quickly discovered the demoscene, a creative international collective devoted to creating art with and for computers, which became and still is his premier platform for all kind of ear and eye related art releases. paniq is a member of the demogroups farbrausch and neuro. Farbrausch is widely known for its impressive demonstrations of 3D programming and presentation skills.

Since 2006, paniq produces exclusively using his own music program, Aldrin, a tracker for the GNU/Linux operating system, and a lot of other open source audio software.

Since 10 years, paniq has released more than 10 albums on the net, with many more to come. paniq.org hosts most of his productions, all of them freely available and Creative Commons licenced.