Between ethereal textures and organic sculptures rises ex_libris, the new project by Dave Huismans, the Dutch producer behind A Made Up Sound and 2562: two aliases that helped define experimental dub and techno throughout the 2010s. Moving freely between dubstep, future garage, dub techno and abstract electronics, Huismans keeps tracing the less-travelled paths, blending cyber-aquatic echoes and futuristic cityscapes into bionic organisms. With 001, he opens a new chapter in his ongoing sonic exploration: the opener #13-20 (Wetlands) is a ten-minute monolith of stereo fluctuations, tech-jazz chords and an obstinate bassline shaping a vast, magnetic theme: perhaps one of the most impressive moments of recent months in experimental electronic music.
The rest of the record channels dancefloor unease into an intelligent, almost sentient rhythm, as if an ensemble of empathic robots were improvising with human emotion. Balancing eerie tension and futuristic psychedelia, the three tracks of the EP move through every form of dub: from its techno variations to ambient and downtempo drifts, covered in crackles and field recordings that sound like the static of a quantum ecosystem still under construction (#26 (Chapel)). Huismans moves across a wide, ever-shifting range of tones and moods: from soft blue-note accents to the wonky shadow of Actress dissolving somewhere between Wolfgang Voigt and Rod Modell (#25 (Below Surface)). Listeners familiar with A Made Up Sound or 2562 will immediately recognize that same sense of rhythm and tension: a control of the medium untouched by fatigue, even after decades of releases.
Nostalgic yet clear-minded, the record plays like the diary of a psychonaut lost among the chips of a bionic world, where the border between machine and human blurs away. In just twenty-four minutes, the release distills the haze of Basic Channel into the digital organicity of J. Albert. The lo-fi feel, never gratuitous, acts as a conscious texture: calibrated through the IDM code of the 2010s, a grain that frames nocturnal impulses and their solitude. The strength of this EP lies in its sonic clarity, technical finesse and constant inner variety: each track rewrites the coordinates of the previous one, forming a coherent whole in constant motion. With 001, Huismans reaffirms his place within today’s dub techno and IDM scene, proving that the future of sound can still rise from a secret archive of the past.
