- The producer formerly known as M.E.S.H. returns with a suite of warped downtempo and otherworldly dread.
- Listening to one of James Whipple's records feels like opening a sci-fi novel to a random page: suddenly, you find yourself down the alleyway of a ruined city or surrounded by the desolate, rust-hued landscape of a planet on the Outer Rim. The true appeal of the Berlin-based artist's music has less to do with his much-celebrated surgical technicality, and more with his singular ability to transport listeners outside of familiar time or place.
Under the name M.E.S.H., Whipple's metallic rhythms and baroque arrangements played a large part in defining the sonic palette of '10s experimental club. Through his residency at the now-legendary Janus parties and output on Bill Kouligas' PAN, Whipple distilled the era's cross-pollination of club mutations while folding in his taste for emotive electronica and science fiction storytelling, arriving at a sound that was sharp, chromed-out and viscerally effective.
But since his last LP, 2017's Hesaitix, his output as M.E.S.H. was reduced to one-off singles, a mixtape of older material and a compilation of alternate live versions of music recorded over the last five years. This, combined with a significant hiatus from touring the club circuit, seemed to signal Whipple closing the door on the M.E.S.H. project.
While Whipple has never completely fallen into the anonymous electronic artist trope, he's expressed disinterest in making the move to front-facing performer that many of his contemporaries have. Shying away from the camera, his records have always been at the foreground. It makes sense, then, that his vision under his new Hesaitix moniker would emerge subtly. Noctian Airgap feels less like an explosive entrance and more like ripples in a pond as something approaches.
Noctian Airgap's track titles feature references to military sci-fi franchise BattleTech, FlatNet (a process involving algorithmic reconstruction of photorealistic scenes captured with lensless cameras), and Santa Rosa, a small island off the coast of Santa Barbara, California. Whipple has described Noctian Airgap as a "nostalgia album," citing how some of the tracks were made by reconstructing his memories of old electronic projects and ephemera.
Through the lens of Whipple's razor-edged production, heritage genres feel souped-up and hypermodern. This is most obvious in "Taurian Shade," which unfolds like classic IDM, with skeletal drums and resampled scratches dancing over warm pads. On "Volunteer," the most faithfully trip-hop track of the bunch, a beat played on an acoustic drum kit is mangled until it sounds like a gun cocking back to reload. Moments of groove are possible in this world, but not without the need to look over your shoulder.
The album's most jarring switch-up comes on "Black Line," a midway track where birdsong and plucked string instruments suddenly appear, offering a reprieve that feels almost cheerful, before being swallowed by unnerving synths and a relentless metallic thud. These scenes are broken up by occasional interruptions from the human voice. But the faulty radio transmissions on "Volunteer" and disembodied vocal on "Subdermal"—which stutters, stops, and finally blurts, "The river of red / the river of rust red water"—only deepen the record's sense of post-human isolation. These additions actually do less to add warmth than its cool, sloping production.
Though Whipple's last album found him in higher, club-friendly BPM ranges, Noctian Airgap unfolds at a lurching pace, its orchestral arrangements and dark atmospheres pierced by screwed downtempo and illbient structures. In "Geflatnet," the trip-hop beat heaves along like a lumbering mech. Percussion marches with militant urgency on the title track, however, which is then re-moulded as swung hip-hop in "Anticrime." While its atmosphere projects visions of barren and violent landscapes, the beats on Noctian Airgap unfold with a cool sensuality, like they're soundtracking a subterranean rave hidden from the world's hostile environment.
Noctian Airgap exists in a world of extremes—an effect amplified by Whipple's tendency toward purposefully opaque world building. 2017's Hesaitix was accompanied by a scene-setting poem: "A laugh behind an evil curtain. A drummer that's cool and grotesque, a detuned siren. A brushfire under a full moon." As Noctian Airgap unfolds, its maze of references coalesce into vivid imagery of unending expanses and ruins of failed civilisations. It may sound brutal and unpredictable, but it's also breathtaking.
Tracklist01. Cusp of Unknowing
02. Taurian Shade
03. Geflatnet
04. Volunteer
05. Santarosae (Black Dolphin)
06. Black Line
07. Noctian Airgap
08. Anticrime
09. Wallet / Face
10. Subdermal
11. Hypersea
12. Gezeiten