Saturday, July 14, 2007

Double Leopards - Urban Concussion Pic Disk 12" (2004, QBICO)



The Wire-July 2004 issue 245: "Though their previous releases were impressively dense, last year's Halve Maen felt like Double Leopards' defining moment, a massive hole that swallowed every pebble of this Brooklyn quartet's gravelly drone. Urban Concussion, a beautifully titled pic disk on QBICO label, at fisrt seems smaller in scope. It's limited ed., 32 min. in length, and coated with a glowing Graham Lambkin artwork that's so eye-freezing it's tempting to hang the record on the wall without ever placing it under the needle. But once the stylus hits, Urban Concussion is as cavernous and gravitational as its predecessor. Side one begins with a warped hum and some intermittent claking, resembling Morse code from a distant star. Low spoken vocals echo in the background, combining with wavering feedback and busy ambience to create the feel of a hallucinatory train station. Live, DL' power rises with amplification and room size, but here they prove equally adept at limiting its dimensions, gaining speed so gradually it's like watching technicolor grass grow. 15 min. in , a hollow roar slides into a beam of treble, then decays into gitty rumble akin to a fuzzy needle stuck happily on a groove. Side two is more open and roomy, with distinct noises more prevalent than heavy drones. Ping-ponged bleeps, propellered whirrs and shards of abrasion all push and shove. While the range of sounds hardly varies throught the track's 14 min., the permutations are fascinatingly unpatterned, like a simple mathematical exercise that accidentally creates infinity inside a box. But DL can never stray too far from drone, and Urban Concussion ends by immersing the listener in a planet sized seashell that this stellar group seems to have patented." Marc Masters. Description from QBICO.

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4 comments:

steve said...

Excellent. Will have to check out!

Unknown said...

I've got Halve Maen and it is good, so I'm really looking forward to this. Thanks very much!!

Anonymous said...

OOooh so good! We are loving this one. Thanks for being so damn consistant. Also... do you know where we could find Double Leopards' album "Out of One Through One and To One"?

any requests yourself?

rvdh said...

yes, ill post that soon. hold your pants.

my requests?

psychedelic ultra drone destruction please. thx.