Whyte’s debut album, Glass Swords, came out in 2011 and was immediately embraced as proof of a new strain of digital maximalism in dance music. But as he gears up to release his second album, it seems that for Whyte, it isn’t about jamming in more so much as a refusal to be tied down. “I like the idea that the tracks can be very open,” he says. “I try to throw in things that might make you think and keep your mind open.” In conversa- tion, Whyte is economical with his words, although there are moments when his ideas fall like rain, such as when he discusses the theme behind his new album. Its title, Green Language, refers both to a divine tongue that existed “before the human mind came in and muddled things up” and to the coded scripts that Renaissance-era alchemists used to ensure their secrets didn’t fall into the wrong hands. “Music speaks to you, but it’s not bound to one meaning,” he says. “It means whatever it means in the moment. The more you listen to it, you uncover different meanings and different messages.”

That fluidity flows throughout the album, which twists and wriggles like a shape-shifting spirit. There’s “Up Down,” a ferocious, tropical- tinged number featuring one of Rustie’s favorite grime MCs, D Double E; “I just love the character you feel from his voice,” Rustie says. Elsewhere, “Paradise Stone” appears at first glance to be a xylophone daydream. Step a little closer, though, and it sounds like an electrical fire is raging beneath. “I don’t really think about these things until after I’ve made them, actually,” he says, confirming his open-minded approach. “Then these sort of messages or visions come.” For Rustie, the purpose of music isn’t to be a butterfly pinned on a wall—named and framed—it’s to wonder where it might fly to next.