The Leopard by Sean McCann

For fans of Matmos, Nicolas Jaar, David Lynch’s dialogue, and David Cronenberg’s aesthetics, The Leopard by Sean McCann tells the grotesque tale of five characters cannibalizing themselves in the style of an experimental, musique concrete opera. Voice actors deliver dialogue in haunting deadpan, reducing their unholy meal to something mundane, something not worth so much as raising one’s voice about. Interspersed fleshy sound effects reveal the depravity behind these level tones, however, our characters at times betraying themselves and retching at their own actions even as their voices reduce their ongoing dismemberment to a mere inconvenience. Through the majority of the record, only the faintest of musical accompaniment lingers in the background, ratcheting up tension with classical choral, string, and piano tones as disturbingly unbothered as the dialogue. We wince in horror as the characters wither away, victims of their own appetite, a hunger left unsatiated despite their relentless efforts to eviscerate themselves. We follow suit, gorging our faces on our own limbs, trading this disgusting comfort for a planet inhabited only by cockroaches and bare stone.