Wall of Sound PR

Laptop, the electro-indie project of New York musician and filmmaker Jesse Hartman, releases the five-track Nothing to Declare EP on October 23, preceded on October 16 by an unlikely Laptop cover of Madonna’s hit single ‘Music’.

Laptop’s version takes Madonna’s song somewhere else entirely, replacing the original’s pop cool with Hartman’s dry indie-rock delivery. It’s a cover, but also a nod to an old friend and the peculiar way their careers intersected, separated, and, decades later, ended up on the same Laptop EP.

Commenting on the cover, Hartman says: “Madonna’s ‘Music’ came out in the summer of 2000, at almost the exact moment I was being shown the door by the music business—Island was falling apart around me, Universal was shelving my record. I was on the edge.  So coming back to the song now, 26 years later, feels like a strange little act of symmetry. I’m not sure whether I’m covering Madonna or haunting my own past.”

After returning to the stage solo for his first proper Laptop show in over two decades earlier this summer at  a sold out Betsey Trotwood (not to mention a surprise appearance from Stiff Records legend Wreckless Eric), Hartman will be appearing at Servant Jazz Quarters, London on 27th October 2026.

Support comes from ex-Fat White Family Joe Pancucci’s new project One Fifteen, with tickets on sale from 30th September 2026.

There’s a reason Madonna has found her way onto a Laptop record in 2026, and it goes back nearly three decades.

Hartman and Stuart Price became friends in the late ’90s, when Laptop and Price’s Les Rhythmes Digitales toured together. Price subsequently remixed Laptop’s ‘Nothing to Declare’ under the Les Rhythmes Digitales name. Released on 12-inch by Island Records in 1999, the remix has never previously been available on streaming and finally reappears on the forthcoming new EP.

The record also reunites Hartman with producer Mark Saunders (The Cure, Tricky, Erasure and Neneh Cherry) who produced Laptop’s Island-era recordings and mixed the original ‘Nothing to Declare’ single — the version newly remastered for this EP.

Their collaboration was effectively cut short when Laptop’s Island album became collateral damage in the upheaval surrounding the Universal/PolyGram merger. Hartman and Saunders went their separate ways and hadn’t made a record together in more than two decades. Until now.

Hartman and Saunders recently returned to the studio together, with Saunders working on Laptop’s version of Madonna’s ‘Music’ and the new ‘Your Body’, so Nothing to Declare isn’t simply a return to their old work—it also picks up a collaboration interrupted more than twenty years ago.

The story of how it was interrupted is considerably less tidy.

The Universal/PolyGram merger swallowed Island, much of Laptop’s label team disappeared, and Hartman was moved from Island to MCA. He relocated from New York to Los Angeles to be closer to his new label. Then MCA dropped him.

There appeared to be another way out. London label Wall of Sound—home to Les Rhythmes Digitales—wanted to invest in Laptop, but Island wouldn’t release Hartman’s album to them. And then came the Viper Room.

Les Rhythmes Digitales were playing there and Hartman went along to see his old friends, with Wall of Sound still hovering as a new home for Laptop. Instead, someone in the LRD camp gave him ecstasy. Hartman visibly lost his mind, fled the club before the band had even played and made a terrifying drive across Los Angeles in his battered silver Honda Civic back to Echo Park. The Wall of Sound deal never happened.

“Stuart went on to produce Madonna,” quips Hartman. “I went on to drive a Honda Civic back to Echo Park on ecstasy after leaving his Viper Room show before he even played. We took slightly different paths.”

Hartman returned to New York and went on to make and release three Laptop albums largely outside the major-label system. Price, meanwhile, became one of the most successful producers of his generation, eventually producing Madonna’s Confessions on a Dance Floor. Which brings us back to ‘Music’.

Naturally, Hartman didn’t choose one of the Madonna records Price actually produced. He chose ‘Music’, produced by French dance producer Mirwais—a more oblique connection, but a considerably more Laptop one.

The Viper Room story gets a more direct retelling on ‘Your Body’, which turns that disastrous night into a song. The EP contains two versions: ‘Your Body’ and Saunders’ magnificently titled ‘Your Body (Mark Saunders Breakdown at the Discotheque Mix)’.

It makes Nothing to Declare something stranger than a reissue. Two producers from Laptop’s Island period reappear on the same record more than two decades later: Price through a remix rescued from a 1999 12-inch, and Saunders both on the remastered original single and as Hartman’s collaborator again in the present.

Taken together, the EP is part new Laptop record and part recovered history: a lost Les Rhythmes Digitales remix, a remastered Island-era single, Madonna put through the Laptop machine, new work with Mark Saunders, and Hartman finally writing about the night when one possible version of his career disappeared somewhere between the Viper Room and Echo Park.

Price became one of the most successful producers of his generation. Hartman and Saunders found their way back into a room together.

Twenty-seven years later, there is, apparently, still something to declare.

Laptop’s Nothing To Declare EP is released 23rd October 2026

Live Dates:

27.10.26 – London – Servant Jazz Quarters (w/ support from One Fifteen)