Jonas Reinhardt

Jonas Reinhardt is the nom de musique of San Francisco-based electronic artist Jesse Reiner, who looks to the analog sounds, organic atmospheres, and hypnotic rhythms of '70s pioneers such as Jean Michel Jarre, Klaus Schulze, and Tangerine Dream for inspiration. Though he played other kinds of music before performing and recording as Jonas Reinhardt, Reiner always listened to electronic music of the late '60s and '70s, and got a Moog Realistic Concertmate MG-1 in the mid-'90s. A few years later, he studied music synthesis at the Harvard Electronic Music Center and maintained an interest in this approach to music-making while he played with other bands. Reiner began using the Reinhardt moniker for his self-titled 2008 Kranky debut; an iTunes EP, Modern by Nature's Reward, followed. Jonas Reinhardt eventually expanded into a full-fledged band, with Trans Am's Phil Manley on guitars, Mi Ami's Damon Palermo on drums, and Citay's Diego Gonzalez on bass. This lineup recorded Powers of Audition, which appeared in 2010 and married the meticulous sound of Reiner's earlier work with live instrumentation.