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. deepest leftfield house / ambient collages, grooves & excursions. First 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.

Part earthy, part swampy, 001’s A-side ‘Wetlands’ is an epic triptych; a shifting 120bpm groove with drips of percussion being the only somewhat constant factor throughout its 10 minutes of continuous movement and exploration, coming full circle near the very end. The B-side dials the pace further down, first on the introverted yet heartfelt ‘Chapel’ (B1) with its intricate patchwork of sampled pads and warped, eroded loops over a driving 4/4 downbeat, then in the barely-there structure of deepest house remnants + ambient haze in ‘Below Surface’ (B2), drifting even further off the grid.

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.