Biography
Brian Leeds, recording as Huerco S., stood among the most prominent figures in the 2010s outsider house underground before gradually turning away from club-oriented work toward a singular strain of experimental ambient music. Grainy, lo-fi dance material filled his first album, Colonial Patterns, issued in 2013. The 2016 follow-up, For Those of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have), dispensed with beats yet retained crackly, detached rhythmic loops. Leeds founded the West Mineral Ltd. label and issued further releases under the additional guises Pendant and Loidis. Returning to the Huerco S. name, he delivered the abstract 2022 album Plonk, which inclined toward IDM and experimental hip-hop.
Leeds was born in Kansas City and first gravitated toward grindcore, metal, and screamo before encountering drum'n'bass and dubstep, which opened the door to electronic music. Exposure to Detroit house and German minimal techno prompted him to begin producing in response, establishing the Huerco S. alias in 2010. His offbeat, abstract dance tracks—marked by smudged textures, erratic beats, ambient synth pads, and mysterious samples—soon circulated online. The No Jack EP appeared on Wicked Bass in 2012, followed by an untitled cassette on Opal Tapes; Boomkat Editions later reissued the latter on vinyl. The R.E.G.A.L.I.E.R. EP, released under the pseudonym Royal Crown of Sweden on Anthony Naples' Proibito label in April 2013, preceded the Future Times release of Apheleia's Theme.
Colonial Patterns, Leeds's acclaimed debut full-length, came out on Oneohtrix Point Never's Software imprint at the end of that summer. Proibito issued the 2014 EP A Verdigris Reader, credited simply to H.S., and followed with Railroad Blues in 2015. The same label also released his second full-length, For Those of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have), in 2016—a striking ambient work that rapidly ranked among the decade's most celebrated albums in the genre—along with the subsequent QTT4 EP.
In 2017 Leeds launched West Mineral Ltd., which put out records by longtime associates such as Pontiac Streator and Exael, whose approaches aligned with his own interest in unconventional, ambient-adjacent music. As Pendant he released the darker album Make Me Know You Sweet and, as Loidis, a more beat-driven EP. Leeds participated in the abstract techno groups Ghostride the Drift and Critical Amnesia, each of which 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" and the full-length Plonk on Incienso, an album that, while less cloudy than its predecessors, remained dense with intricate, off-kilter rhythms.
Leeds was born in Kansas City and first gravitated toward grindcore, metal, and screamo before encountering drum'n'bass and dubstep, which opened the door to electronic music. Exposure to Detroit house and German minimal techno prompted him to begin producing in response, establishing the Huerco S. alias in 2010. His offbeat, abstract dance tracks—marked by smudged textures, erratic beats, ambient synth pads, and mysterious samples—soon circulated online. The No Jack EP appeared on Wicked Bass in 2012, followed by an untitled cassette on Opal Tapes; Boomkat Editions later reissued the latter on vinyl. The R.E.G.A.L.I.E.R. EP, released under the pseudonym Royal Crown of Sweden on Anthony Naples' Proibito label in April 2013, preceded the Future Times release of Apheleia's Theme.
Colonial Patterns, Leeds's acclaimed debut full-length, came out on Oneohtrix Point Never's Software imprint at the end of that summer. Proibito issued the 2014 EP A Verdigris Reader, credited simply to H.S., and followed with Railroad Blues in 2015. The same label also released his second full-length, For Those of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have), in 2016—a striking ambient work that rapidly ranked among the decade's most celebrated albums in the genre—along with the subsequent QTT4 EP.
In 2017 Leeds launched West Mineral Ltd., which put out records by longtime associates such as Pontiac Streator and Exael, whose approaches aligned with his own interest in unconventional, ambient-adjacent music. As Pendant he released the darker album Make Me Know You Sweet and, as Loidis, a more beat-driven EP. Leeds participated in the abstract techno groups Ghostride the Drift and Critical Amnesia, each of which 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" and the full-length Plonk on Incienso, an album that, while less cloudy than its predecessors, remained dense with intricate, off-kilter rhythms.
Albums
