Despite its’ relatively young age, Halve Maen is an antique. While many of their peers were obsessed with destruction and ear piercing dynamic shifts, Double Leopards were more meditative in their approach to noise music. The group’s best and most sprawling release unfolds with equal amounts of menace and splendor. The hollow recording quality makes it feel both ancient and secretive — a basement recording never meant for anyone except those who recorded it.
Murky and brooding across 75 minutes, the best moments occur when the group let you peer inside their sound momentarily. Halve Maen dwells on decay. The rhythmic pulse of the music is slowly shed or revealed under the surrounding viscera. A collaborative effort between four artists who were distinctly different in their own right, the album moves in ways that never seem predetermined or obvious.
“Hemisphere In Your Hair” is the album centerpiece and standout track. Covering the entire second side, the 20-minute cyclical drone is minimal but never dull, and always shifting. In “Druid Spectre” detuned piano, guitar, and drums fight for superiority, while the final two part suite “The Secret Correspondence” finds the group throwing everything they have at the listener until the only thing left is the human voice.
Double Leopards were lumped in an umbrella genre whose related acts often took pride in being overly prolific. Too often great albums were lost in the shuffle or never found wide release. Halve Maen is an exception that was given a wide CD reissue in 2005 and can still be found. Patient listeners who locate this relic should dust it off and give it a chance.