Audiopile Review: Dutch producer Dave Huismans adopts ex_libris as his new moniker, dropping two EPs to help launch a new imprint of the same name. Probably best known as either A Made Up Sound or 2562, Huismans was a mainstay of the Tectonic imprint during their impactful years at the bleeding edge of dubstep in the late ‘00s, but he’s also made appearances on top tier labels like Fabric, Clone, !K7 and Delsin. After ten years of relative silence from the one-time prolific producer, the new name and label are a rebirth, Husimans awakening invigorated and armed with a pair of EPs that arrive perfectly timed to coincide with the increasingly murky permutations of techno and house that have been a fixation of ours. With little regard to defined structure, the pair of EPs glide through glassy ambient-house, dub-strained beats and submerged minimalism, sometimes all at once, each track a swampy soup of prickly textures and subtle detailing that lean on his formative years of sound design expertise at Tectonic. Huismans fillets dance music’s innards, his looped melodies and fizzing percussion dragged through dub-wise depths, patterns emerging only to be swallowed as the tracks mutate and shed rhythms as swiftly as they arrive. Though released as two EPs, each a triptych of lengthy tracks, both are deeply interconnected, two halves of the same coin. High level stuff that will sit neatly next to early Huerco S or the stickier side of Acting Press. Edition of 300 and now sold out at the source.

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Wonderful Dave Huismans (A Made Up Sound) prod. warm & moving leftfield house / beat collages & excursions. Second of the initial two volumes in a small new 12″ series – each ltd to 300 vinyl copies cut @ D&M, with stamped colored sleeves & labels designed by Bernie van Vlijmen.

On 002’s opener ‘Running Out’ (A1), midtempo percussion & chimes take their time settling into their groove in a playful back & forth, before pulling back halfway through and letting the light in for a heartstring-tugging finale. Offbeat oddity ‘Cascade’ (A2) chirps, blips, stretches and hisses like a living organism, building intensity towards its climax and release, while the loving embrace of ‘Walrus’ marks an empathic high point in the series so far, its warm and delicate 11-minute narrative unfolding across the entire B-side.

The visual concept for the ex_libris series comes courtesy of Bernie van Vlijmen, who translated the round and fluid character of the music into a palette of muted natural colors and stamped shapes emerging through a designed process balancing chance and intent, inspired by nature’s unpredictable rhythms and hydrostatics in particular: guided by its own quiet logic, no two outcomes alike, like waves crashing. Organic and alive, as if they surfaced on their own.