• An eerie and beautiful album from the Kansas producer that builds vivid worlds out of techno and ambient.
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  • Brian Leeds's misty music is hard to pin down. The last album under his Huerco S. moniker, 2016's For Those Of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have), was soothing, dark and vaporous, a bold and original record that became a modern ambient classic. Later releases under his Pendant alias felt like a rebuke to that cryptic beauty. Last year's To All Sides They Will Stretch Out Their Hands was nightmarish and industrial, perhaps the furthest one could stray from the "productivity music" Leeds feared he had a hand in. Now six years since the last Huerco S. project, Leeds has revived his best-known alias with Plonk. The brief name isn't the only stylistic turn. Plonk certainly has beautiful ambient compositions, but it also expands the Huerco S. sound with plenty of snappy, off-kilter techno and exciting stylistic pivots. The onomatopoeic title Plonk stems from Leeds' lifelong love of cars—how the machine whirrs and plods and, well, plonks about. It's a great starting point for a record far more crisp and physical sounding than the albums that preceded it. The mechanical fascination is clear on tracks like "Plonk III" and "Plonk VIII," with their cybernetic synths and clattering, Autechre-like rhythms. Where prior Huerco S. tunes were hazy and hermetic, much of Plonk sounds bouncy, almost sci-fi-inflected. "Plonk IV" is the most fun and dance floor-ready of the lineup, its skittering beats and spiky tempo imitating the rhythmic clanging of a tuned-up engine. "Plonk IX" features Leeds's first-ever vocal guest. Huerco S. is a typically insular-sounding project, so this choice is the biggest leap into the unknown on the LP, though left-field rapper Sir EU ends up being a great fit. His stream-of-consciousness bars warp and dip among the track's bongo and hissing synths. Like the best Huerco S. songs, it's fluid, spacey and a bit inscrutable. While Plonk is packed with fresh, tactile sounds, it also houses some of Leeds's most affecting ambient compositions. The heavenly synths on "Plonk VI" sound like music from a safe room in a survival horror video game—a moment of respite from an unpredictable otherworld. Meanwhile, the swirling and foggy "Plonk VII" is both calm and sinister. Plonk comes to a gorgeous finale on the 11 and a half minute closer "Plonk X," where warm synth hums and luminescent pads swirl into a healing, aquatic atmosphere. It could give any track on the last Huerco S. album a run for its money. Plonk isn't quite a bedtime listen, but it's not exactly dancey, or as provocative as Leeds' Pendant output. So where does that leave it? A clue may lie in Plonk's chapter-like structure. Each song feels like its own sonic world, distinct from whatever precedes it, yet it somehow feels natural for ghostly warping on "Plonk V" to follow tinny shuffling on "Plonk IV." The record also fits in with the other forward-thinking albums on Incienso from DJ Python, Marco Shuttle and Nene H that exist in a hazy purgatory between the dance floor and ambient music. And in diversifying his sound palette, Leeds excels at immersive world building, but this time in miniature. These ten vignettes, each a complex treat for the ears, are eerie and alluring spaces that intrepid listeners will get lost in for a while to come.
  • Tracklist
      01. Plonk I 02. Plonk II 03. Plonk III 04. Plonk IV 05. Plonk V 06. Plonk VI 07. Plonk VII 08. Plonk VIII 09. Plonk IX 10. Plonk X
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