- James Whipple, a founding member of Berlin's Janus collective, stands in a twilight zone between the stage and the club floor. In an interview with 032c, the West Coast expat better known as M.E.S.H. made a distinction between his functional job as a DJ and the more expressive work of his productions. Despite holding the two as separate, when playing in Vancouver on November 7th, he blurred the lines between the two, combining elements of his skills in both areas. Brought in by members of local crew SacredSound Club, he was billed at Red Gate, an art gallery that hosts events ranging from D.I.Y. punk shows to club nights.
In an attempt to adapt to the setting, which was neither a club nor a dedicated live performance space, Whipple delivered a shapeshifting set, using CDJs to recreate segments of his tracks. He opened with off-kilter loops that were more intriguing than inviting, before layering samples with abstract precision. Themes and elements would bleed in and out of each other rather than following structures of build and release. Despite its disjointed nature, the set recalled the most lucid moments from this year's Piteous Gate album on PAN. "Epithet"'s futuristic chimes and the trance-infused pads of the title track served as hooks for an otherwise oblique set.
These moments of transparent beauty provided only brief refuge from the assaults of heavy percussion that gave the performance its violent shape. Whipple voiced a polyphony of production styles throughout, recalling the flanger treatments of PAN labelmate Lee Gamble's most spaced-out moments, while filtering them through his own overstimulating web of percussive samples.
As the music drew to a close, I could tell that I wasn't the only one in the audience looking for an encore, or some kind of continuation to the narrative. But for the sake of consistency, given the state of conflict embodied in many of M.E.S.H.'s productions, the experience was probably better left unresolved.