M.E.S.H. “Imperial Sewers”

22 May 2014 — Henry Schiller

M.E.S.H. is a dancehall mystic, channeling the friendly spirits of warm urban nights and weekends into tangible rhythmic heaps. Brief and dazzling as well as enveloping; thumping, dungeonous drums link into parsed segments of lazy summers and late evenings buying Gatorade and deciding whether to stay out or go back home. We could go either way, and M.E.S.H. would provide the requisite soundtrack. On “Imperial Sewers” the Berlin producer seems to relax listeners into the throes a technological frenzy, infusing rhythmic club music with tidal washes of R&B and electronica.

M.E.S.H. has an ear pressed firmly to the fixtures of global dance music, and is able to make even the most remote and obscure of influences sound local. “Imperial Sewers” carries its accomplishments in its title: far below street level, the untouchable splendor of a distant class finds itself mixing, ultimately and magnificently, into the familiar, the comfortable, the immediate.

The Scythians EP is out June 6 on PAN.