Huerco S.

Huerco S. (Brian Leeds) was one of the most celebrated producers of the 2010s outsider house underground, but he gradually drifted away from club material, and has since explored a highly distinctive form of experimental ambient music. His debut album, 2013′s Colonial Patterns, was a collection of grainy, lo-fi dance tracks. His next album, 2016′s For Those of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have), abandoned beats but still featured crackly, detached rhythmic loops. Leeds formed the West Mineral Ltd. label and released albums under several additional projects, including Pendant and Loidis. He returned to the name Huerco S. with 2022′s Plonk, an abstract work that veered toward IDM and experimental hip-hop.
Leeds was born in Kansas City and initially interested in grindcore, metal, and screamo before getting into electronic music after discovering drum’n’bass and dubstep. After becoming enamored with Detroit house and German minimal techno, he began making music in response to these sounds, establishing the Huerco S. moniker in 2010. His offbeat, abstract dance tracks, often featuring smudged textures and erratic beats as well as ambient synth pads and mysterious samples, soon surfaced online. Following 2012′s No Jack EP on the Ukrainian label Wicked Bass, an untitled cassette appeared on Basic House’s taste-making experimental label Opal Tapes. The tape helped gain Huerco S. a cult following, and Boomkat Editions later reissued it on vinyl. Following the R.E.G.A.L.I.E.R. EP under the pseudonym Royal Crown of Sweden, issued by Anthony Naples’ Proibito label in April 2013, Future Times released Huerco S.’s Apheleia’s Theme.
His acclaimed debut full-length, Colonial Patterns, appeared on Oneohtrix Point Never’s Software imprint at the end of that summer. The EP A Verdigris Reader (simply credited to H.S.) was issued by Proibito in 2014, followed by Railroad Blues in 2015. The label also issued his second full-length, 2016′s For Those of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have), a stunning excursion into ambient music that quickly became one of the genre’s most acclaimed albums of the decade. He followed the release with an EP titled QTT4.
Leeds established West Mineral Ltd. in 2017, and the label released records by longtime friends and scenemates of his, such as Pontiac Streator and Exael, who share a similar vision for unconventional, ambient-adjacent music. Leeds also released a darker record called Make Me Know You Sweet under the name Pendant, as well as a more beat-driven EP as Loidis. Leeds participated in the abstract techno groups Ghostride the Drift and Critical Amnesia, who each issued a self-titled record on the xpq? label. He also collaborated with cellist Lucy Railton and sound artist Britton Powell as PDP III, and released a second Pendant album, To All Sides They Will Stretch Out Their Hands, in 2021. Huerco S. resurfaced in 2022 with a remix of Carmen Villain’s “Subtle Bodies,” as well as the full-length Plonk, released by Incienso. Another departure for the alias, the album was less cloudy than its predecessors, but still filled with intricate, off-kilter rhythms. ~ Paul Simpson