Bleep

On his first album in six years under the Huerco S. moniker, Brian Leeds casts away any need for a linear sonic identity with a definitive “plonk.”

If there’s any consistency within Huerco S. as a project, Leeds certainly knows how to capture a cultural moment before it crests. The Kansas-based producer came to prominence in the early 2010s as a pioneer of outsider house, netting praise for his deconstructions of house, trap and drill as the microgenre reached its peak. He returned in 2016 with For Those of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have), an album that completely bypassed the dancefloor in favour of a future in ambient music. The pivot paid off; For Those of You was heralded as a modern classic upon release and signalled the ambient revival to come at the close of the decade.

With Huerco S.’s reputation at near-mythological levels, it almost makes sense to view Plonk as a much-needed exhale for Leeds. His stunning sense of sound design and avoidance of repeating the past is still present, but Plonk and its ten shapeshifting passages were named after a made-up descriptor Leeds came up with while struggling to articulate his latest demos. According to recent interviews, he cites a love of rap production and the bass-heavy pop turns of Oli XL as inspiration, but Plonk contorts in a uniquely liminal space between club-worthy passages and stuttering experimental detours. With the “mournful sodium glow of cities at night” serving as a suggested backdrop in the press notes, Plonk makes for a disorienting night drive listen, but only furthers Leeds’s peerless status in electronic music with yet another idiosyncratic sonic pivot.