Mesh - The Point At Which It Falls Apart (25th Anniversary Edition)

Mesh spent the nineties as one of British synthpop's stranger export stories, a band from Bristol who found their real audience several hundred miles east. The Point at Which It Falls Apart, released in 1999, is where that started. It was the record that turned Mark Hockings and Richard Silverthorn from a promising duo into a fixture of the European dark electronic scene, and it has been out of print and hunted down at collector prices for years.

The division of labor that has defined Mesh since 1991 is fully formed here. Silverthorn writes the music, all cold synth architecture and hooks that refuse to leave, while Hockings writes the words and sings them like someone talking himself down from something. Across twelve tracks and fifty-three minutes, "I Fall Over," "It Scares Me," "Not Prepared," and "The Damage You Do" hit the sweet spot the band has been working ever since: melancholy with a pulse, big enough for a dancefloor and bruised enough to mean it.

Everything Mesh did afterward runs through this album. The major label release of Who Watches Over Me in 2002 broadened their reach across Europe and especially in Germany, where Automation Baby later reached number 33 on the album charts and Looking Skyward climbed to number 12. Hockings and Silverthorn are at work on the next studio record as this one returns.

The 25th anniversary edition presents the 2024 remaster inside a 48-page hardcover artbook, roughly 18cm square, with a second CD of eleven remixes and rare B-sides plus new liner notes from Mark Wybrew and Jan Winterfeld. The definitive version of a long unavailable record.