Huerco S. - Colonial Patterns
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Huerco S. - Colonial Patterns
Holdrons Arcade
135A Rye Lane
Unit 11 Holdrons Arcade
London SE15 4ST
United Kingdom
Label: Software – SFT037
Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, Album, Limited Edition, Reissue, Bone
Country: US
Released: Sep 24, 2013 (2023 Repress)
Genre: Electronic
Style: Lo-Fi, Experimental, House, Techno
Brian Leeds' debut album as Huerco S. arrives on bone colour vinyl in an ultra-limited pressing of 1000 copies for its tenth anniversary — and Colonial Patterns remains as beguiling and as difficult to place as it was on first release. Signed to Daniel Lopatin's Software label after a handful of releases on Future Times, Opal Tapes and Wicked Bass, Leeds arrived with considerably more press than expected for a cassette-releasing experimentalist, and the music justified every word of it.
The first thing listeners encounter is the album's dedication to ambience. Unlike Leeds' previous releases, much of the hour-long record is beatless — the textures magnificent, the decayed sounds evoking a timeless sense of loss. From the woozy strings of opener Struck With Deer Lungs to the meditative depths of Monks Mound (Arcology), melodies are buried under static and distortion, left for the listener to unearth and interpret. The album's colonial commentary emerges through this same process of decay — subjecting contemporary house and techno to the erosion of music's past, provoking a convincing discourse on history's susceptibility to manipulation. Standout Prinzif makes this most explicit, a veil of meditative ambience abruptly parted to reveal the robust, colourful terrain buried — and far from dormant — beneath. Genuinely thought-provoking and, when the clouds part, nakedly beautiful.
