Double Leopards
Urban Concussion

Like our ancestors, we come into the world in blood, with tears in our eyes and slobber that at times almost chokes us. Then we are loved, cradled (unless thrown into an incubator...), nurtured by maternal milk. And we begin our descent into the abyss. For some, it is welcoming, and in many ways, they find in it the warm and consoling womb, now abandoned... only much more spacious, and, worse still, much more crowded: this mania, more or less transfigured in their behaviors or actions, will throw them into the fray with their peers, all united in the obsession with primacy and command. Others, on the other hand, will finally have clear and distinct what, in the maternal womb, was only vaguely seen by them, a latent fear, a nightmare already dreamt thousands of times and inherent already in the first sperm: that final vertigo called life. For the former, it is the beginning; for the latter, the end. This state of affairs has been repeated the same yet different in every historical era. Similarly, the fate of all humanity follows in music: for some, it is purely material, a commodity of venting and recreation at the same time; for others, a purely spiritual essence, able to synthesize, even for an instant, the great mystery that surrounds them(us).

Whoever manages to internalize this album by Double Leopards in the right way certainly belongs to the second camp... the camp of lunatics, of judges inflexible with others, as with themselves. And indeed, hurried and degenerating humanity cannot be interested in 'this kind of music: for them, it would be like listening to the prolonged and unison lament of their cell phones and satellite phones about the sad fate their "masters" are heading towards. I already hear my friends dressed in Gucci, puzzled, incessantly asking me: "But Micky...?! What is this stuff? How do you dance to it??!"; their mascara spreading in a grimace of disgust... I can venture some answers, but who knows, maybe I'll scare them even more... let's try: slowed panic shivers? Glassy stare. No, that doesn't work... have you ever heard a compilation of subliminal stuff from the '70s called Microgrammes??... "What is Microgrammes?! A new line of aftershave??" contained giggles... No, not even that works... James Plotkin's psych-drone-industrial project baptized Namanax?? Ever heard...? I notice I'm talking to Carmen's ponytail; in fact, the girl has turned around and, indifferent to my explanations, is greeting Marco and his gang of spendthrifts, fragrant, sexy, with ready smiles and wit, and so do the other two. I am alone again with my thoughts, with my useless ravings of a mental patient... I turn around too and get myself a spritz, with a lot of wine and almost no Aperol: a real mess... like this party, for that matter... And Adorno comes to mind, when he asserts that, whatever he does, the intellectual is wrong. He experiences as a matter of life, the humiliating alternative faced by all the subjects of late capitalism: to become an adult like everyone else or remain a child...