Double Leopards for Krautrock

Double Leopards were an American post-industrial krautrock ensemble from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, originally formed in New York City around 1997 or 1998. The group began as the vision of Marcia Bassett (aka Zaïmph; of GHQ and formerly un), Chris Gray (formerly of Wicked Finger) and Jon Chapman (aka Co., Inc.; of Sinking Infinites); with the latter's departure in 2001, the remaining members invited Mike Bernstein (aka Workbench) into the fold, who in turn recruited Maya Miller (aka Black Quarter), a visual artist and Double Leopards' only classically-trained member.

Double Leopards played strictly-improvised sustained drones imbued with the DNA of kosmische musik, industrial and space rock, emitting a bleak, viscous murk which took cues from Taj Mahal Travellers, the Theatre of Eternal Music, Cluster's first two LPs and Throbbing Gristle. The band achieved this sound through the use of vocals, guitar, keyboards and bass, processed beyond the point of recognisability via all sorts of junk electronics. Double Leopards' discography consists of twenty-five recordings of mostly limited edition cassettes, CDRs and LPs, issued on labels like American Tapes, U-Sound Archive and Bernstein and Miller's now-inactive Heavy Tapes (with a handful of collaborative releases featuring Detroit noise legends Wolf Eyes and their satellite project Dead Machines). Several releases are documents of the group's immersive live shows, known for the band members crouched over their equipment/FX on the stage floor and unfurling infinitely-delayed vocal-based sonic rituals - massively influential to Oneohtrix Point Never's Daniel Lopatin and fellow brothers-in-Kosugi James Ferraro and Spencer Clark. The quartet's best-known works are the studio albums A Hole Is True (2005, Troubleman Unlimited) and Halve Maen (2003, Eclipse Records); the latter, described as the 21st-century answer to Tangerine Dream's Zeit, received positive critical acclaim from Pitchfork Media, AllMusic and Arthur magazine (which called the double-LP "two records' worth" of Can's "Aumgn").

In the wake of 2006's Crippled Rosebud Binding split/collab with their friends Mouthus and Sunroof!, Double Leopards quietly splintered apart without an announcement. Bassett continued to record solo and with like-minded artists such as Samara Lubelski, Helena Espvall and her then-partner Matthew Bower in the Hototogisu duo while running her personal label Yew. White Rock members Bernstein and Miller focused attention on their more psych-rock-oriented band Religious Knives. For a time, Chris Gray carried on as the drummer for his own psych group Endless Boogie. And Jon Chapman stayed busy with Ray Off and New Zealand outfit Eye.

Double Leopards will excite listeners familiar with the Nazgûl, Book of Shadows, Endgame, Bonecloud, Aan, My Cat Is an Alien and the Skaters.

"Halve Maen" (2003)

"A Pebble in Thousands of Unmapped Revolutions" (2001)

"Savage Summer Sun" (2005)

"Out of One, Through One and to One" (2005)

"Live Detroit & Louisville" (2004)

"Double Leopards" (2002)

An interesting addition to "Krautrock", specially as this probably should not be considered anything like it.

It might have been inspired by ZEIT (Tangerine Dream) or even Popol Vuh's first album, and both of these were considered as learning how to work with the synthesizers, which Florian Fricke gave up after that first album. TD went on to evolve from simply learning how to work away from the drones and turn them into what could be defined as more serious music.

These experiments, are also found, in Peter Michael Hamel's work and his band (which in his website is listed as his work, btw!!!) and a very interesting, though I never thought of it as great, experiments on the synthesizers, but PMH, as a "professor" would probably have named his experiments something else, but it was not exactly music as we know it and exemplify. And its connection to a BARDO is ... symbolic at the most and not real! Though it works as a nice meditation work, though it is not as clean in the meditation side as some of the work that FRANK PERRY has done which is a much more dedicated meditation that is in some ways so well tuned as to be very difficult, and it took me 3 or 4 listens to get comfortable and then over 6 months to sync in ... and it was fantastic.

"Krautrock" had its first moments in experiments, however they were better suited for rock music and theater/film, which is where the majority of their starters all went. And the material that was moer simplistic and defined as an experiment, anyway, kinda fell out of favor, though it still continued and eventually became something else, and some of it, fits in sound experiments, and experimental electronica, a sub-genre that should fit the really early folks in the synthesizers in the late 1950's and early 1960's, when it was about the development of the sound itself and the potential in the various bits and pieces that were added to the synthesizer, that eventually got enough "controls" that one could make music out of it.

Again, I think that DOUBLE LEOPARDS definitely needs to be added to PA, but where it fits is tough ... and I'm not sure that "krautrock" is the right area for it, specially when compared to AD2, Can, Neu, Harmonia and many others that were ... rock music for the most part without the westernized/commercialized ideas in their music.

In some ways, this reminds me of the wide open experiments in the first AD commune where it all sounded like it was just a party and anyone could join in ... and that free form idea kinda fits here, in these "drone" works of theirs, though I would thing that we need to address the "drone" stuff and give it a proper name and designation, so the description better defines their work. 

This is nice stuff, but I don't think of it as "krautrock".