While Oren Ambarchi and Jim O'Rourke have collaborated in a number of forms, from remixes to their acclaimed trio with Keiji Haino, Indeed is their first duo album. One long electro-acoustic exploration (presented here as two side-long pieces), what Ambarchi and O'Rourke proffer up here is also melodic and approachable, bringing to mind the warm post-minimalism of composers like Alvin Curran, David Behrman and Luciano Cilio. Indeed, it sounds a bit like the collective textural and melodic personality of their respective solo albums filtered through the highpoints of the Lovely Music catalogue. Beginning with a sequence of analogue electro-acoustic crunch before settling into a warm synth glow highlighted by the occasional melodic or percussive detail, it sounds like the music that two guys who have honed their skills through years of composition, pop songwriting and rigorous improvisation make when they're having fun in the studio. (Francis Plagne)

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New gear from the PQ corner! 12" with 1 new Quehenberger orginal (Uffuff) and a trio of near remixes from his lastest album Hazard (released as LATON 047 in 2009). Patrick Pulsinger tackles New Beat, in his unique future funk sound. A welcome return of Elin (who hasn't been on a Mego record since 1995, check MEGO 003). He slurps out a version of Hey Gert, making it into an slamming slowed down twister of a track.This leaves the pumping exccess of Altroys (Minimal Soul) Keep Talking remix.

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"Don't look back", repeats one of several voices within Mark van Hoen's The Revenant Diary, his fifth solo album and first release on Editions Mego. Surrounded by weighted beats, analogue synthesizer drones and granular dirt, the unidentified, siren-like female voice's advice is as much seduction as warning. Tellingly so, for as well as being both Van Hoen's most ambitious and his most accessible work, The Revenant Diary is an eloquent meditation on the allures and dangers of memory, regret and nostalgia.

The album's foundation was shaped by a memory and a chance encounter. While remastering some of his early 90s releases and Peel Session tracks, Van Hoen – a founding member of Seefeel, who also worked as Locust and in Seefeel offshoot Scala and has collaborated with Slowdive, Robert Fripp, Edison Woods & Esben and the Witch amongst others – happened upon a track he had recorded in 1982. Attracted by its simplicity, he was inspired to record the basis of The Revenant Diary on 4-track tape, using a minimal set-up, reminiscent of his first early 80s musical adventures as a young teenager. The recollection of one of these – a 13 year old Van Hoen\'s experiment in reel-to-reel tape recording of an ineffectual pop song playing on the radio, which spuriously transformed it into a spooky amalgam of backwards church organ and unintelligible voices – provided an evocative inspiration.

The Revenant Diary pivots on this combination of complex reflection and simplified technology. A determinedly analogue affair, it brims over with Van Hoen's signature sounds: immersively decayed drones, almost broken ambient surfaces and lulling rhythms, with granular crackle providing spectral grit. Fragments of female vocals pepper the album, and notably dominate the 10-minute epic "Holy Me", one of Van Hoen's most complex compositions, in which non-verbal sounds rub delicately against each other in an otherworldly choral composition.

Less song-based than his last solo work, the well-received Where Is The Truth [City Centre Offices, 2010], its palette and structure are more descendants of the 1995 album Truth Is Born Of Arguments, which utilised a similar combination of decayed atmosphere against a granular / glitch rhythmic structure. Tracks like "Laughing Stars At Night" and "Unknown Host" exude a powerful emotional undertow, as alluringly woozy as they are intensely contemplative. But this is no exercise in Instagram-style disposable nostalgia. Van Hoen's adroit juxtapositions of gauzy textures evoke the blurred luminescence of 16mm film and the rich, colour-saturated hues of rediscovered Polaroid photos, as the cover artwork, designed by Sunn O)))'s Stephen O'Malley, acknowledges. The Revenant Diary expertly renders displaced memory daze in lushly melodic, gently delirious electronic sound.

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Remastered, expanded gatefold double LP version (briefly available as a single LP in 2001 and o/p for 10 years now). This version features new artwork by Tina Frank, based on the original 2001 Mego release. Contains "Ohne Sonne" and "47 Blues," previously only available on the Japanese CD versions, as well as a new, extended version of "Happy Audio," exclusive to this release. Endless Summer, originally released in 2001 by Mego, was a breakthrough album for Christian Fennesz -- the album which brought his name and music towards the first steps of mainstream recognition. Following on from the more experimental Hotel Paral.lel (EMEGO 016CD) and the Beach Boys-homaged Plays single, Endless Summer brought the guitars more to the front, the electronics shimmered more, and the melodies shined more brightly. It went on to become a classic of its time, topping many end-of-year polls.

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The music here came about in various ways – one section is an outtake from my recent Multistablity album and is reworked here, another began as a quadraphonic piece composed for and performed at "Supersimetria: New Languages in Computer Music" (curated by Anna Ramos and Roc Jiménez de Cisneros in Barcelona 2011), others were taken from live versions of previously released and unreleased tracks. The idea was to bring these together in an 'almost-live-album' format. The album features three presets taken from Yamaha's four operator frequency modulation synthesisers of the late 1980's­—JazzOrg, LatelyBass and Rich Strg #3—modified to produce numerous descendants. The project was entirely written, mixed, and edited with MIDI. No audio recordings were present, with the following exceptions: the sound of a Mac Mini failing to mount a DVD, recorded with the internal microphone on a MacBook Pro (this provided a rhythmic template for the patterns that follow it); and a short section of Pi Saw flute played by Jan Hendrickse. The project was written in transit during a house and studio move, and exclusively produced using the internal speakers on a MacBook Pro. Due to time constraints, the mastering session with Lupo at Dubplates and Mastering was unattended.

The cover image is of my partner's arm after cutting the pampas grass in our front garden in preparation for the house's new occupier.

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Editions Mego is happy to announce the release of 'Kanal GENDYN', a Vinyl and DVD set by Russell Haswell & Florian Hecker. This is the first full length release by the artists following their highly acclaimed albums, 'Blackest Ever Black (Electroacoustic UPIC Recordings)' (Warner Classics, 2007), and 'UPIC Warp Tracks' (Warp, 2008), in addition to their remix's of Popol Vuh, and Voice Crack.

In the late 90s, early 2000s, it became common for bands, or solo artists to perform live - often alternative - soundtracks to feature films or silent classics. Critical of obvious instrumentation and the combination with known classic film, the artists Russell Haswell & Florian Hecker chose to create a real-time soundtrack, to an unscored film, 'Kanal Video' (1992, 60 min.) by the Swiss artist duo Peter Fischli & David Weiss.

Core to Kanal GENDYN is Haswell & Hecker's ongoing research on the legacies of polymath Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001) and in particular his concept of the Dynamic Stochastic Synthesis, an abstract sound synthesis procedure that creates 'sound out of nothing'.

In an interview with Peter Hoffmann, the artists recall: "This video, which consists of an hour long 'ride' through the Zurich sewage system, with a remotely controlled maintenance vehicle equipped with a video camera to survey the sewers for eventual irregularities of defects — struck us both as an ideal piece to be projected in a 'nightclub' or music venue with a GENDYN only performance. We found twisted relations with such an hour long 'tunnel vision'. Once with the seemingly endless amount of computer generated video projections used as visuals accompanying raves and techno parties during the 1990's — and also to the accounts of visual hallucinations induced by Mescaline as described by Heinrich Klüver in the 1920's — with the so called 'form constants' — where he mentions amongst others, 'tunnel like' patterns. The particularities of GENDYN, with its ever changing and meandering waveforms appeared to us as an ideal counterpart."

Kanal GENDYN was performed on the occasion of the event 'Musterraum 9. Dual Presentation — Peter Fischli & David Weiss — Russell Haswell & Florian Hecker' at Musterraum, Munich, 30.01.2004. Originally constructed as an experimental building, 'Musterraum' — German for sample or reference room — was a freestanding cube with a base area of 10 × 12 meters. Built as a test and reference space for the planning and construction of the adjacent Pinakothek der Moderne.

Two stereo feeds were crossed for quadraphonic (4.0) diffusion using a L&B F12 / B12 loudspeaker system. Performed concurrently to the Peter Fischli & David Weiss, 'Kanal Video' (1992, 60 min.) screened on three facing walls.

Kanal GENDYN is released as stereo vinyl LP + 4.0 DTS 24 Bit / 48 KHz DVD (audio only) set. The cover features 10 stills from the original Fischli & Weiss video, included inside is a 30 x 30 cm 170 gramm paper insert with a further, full-page still, plus extensive sleeve notes by musicologist and software developer Peter Hoffmann, and everything was designed by NORM, Zurich.

Its also worth noting that, with a running time of over a hour, this is one of the longest single LP releases you will come across! Cut by Rashad 'the Master' Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin, Setpember 2011

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Whereas previous works by Mika Vainio have utilised guitar Life (… It Eats You Up) is the first to use the instrument as its primary sound source. A fascinating, sometimes disturbing and deeply personal work this new 10 track set bears all the hallmarks (exacting attention to detail of tone, rhythm and texture) of Vainio's previous works with some stunning surprises, such as his cover version of The Stooges' 'Open Up and Bleed'.

Tracks such as 'Mining' hark bark to the banging beat excesses of Pan sonic, with 'Crashed' and 'And Give Us Our Daily Humiliation' and the opening 'In Silence A Scream Takes A Heart' reveal a new intensity to Vainio's work and is yet another superb additional to his brilliant catalogue.

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Hold Everything Dear is the third installment in the new Cindytalk sound which started with 2007's The Crackle Of My Soul, and then last years Up Here in The Clouds. Its the first in the trilogy to feature musicians other than Gordon Sharp namely the late Matt Kinnison, to whom the album is dedicated.

Inspired by the John Berger book of the same name, this latest release is whole new set of parameters which push the sound on the previous two works to an extreme point of abstraction, and in some places near silent passages and haunted melodic segments. And what a mysterious journey this ends up being with increased use of piano and found/field recordings giving all the tracks a blurry soundtrack appeal to the point where the definitions between the tracks and are no longer clearly defined. It harks back to the odder parts of In This World and The Wind Is Strong albums from the early 1990s. Superbly packaged with new David Coppenhall artwork in a 4-panel digipack and gatefold vinyl sleeve.

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The analogue-digital electronic duo of Marcus Schmickler and Thomas Lehn has been working since its first meeting in December 1998 during the German premiere of the Music in Movement Electronic Orchestra (aka MIMEO) in Cologne. Since they have been extensively touring in Europe, the USA and Japan and performed at Experimental Intermedia/NYC, Mills/Oakland, Bard College, Lampo/Chicago, Princeton University, Festival Wittener Tage fuer Neue Kammermusik, AMPLIFY/Tokyo, CCA/Glasgow, Darmstadt and many other known presenters of contemporary and electronic music. They released several highly acclaimed productions on labels such as erstwhile records and a-Musik.

Editions Mego is thrilled to release their fourth duo album "Live Double Séance [Antaa Kalojen Uida]", a LP vinyl with an attached DTS 5.1 surround sound DVD. Its the first 'live' recording of a concert that took place in Helsinki's Äänen Lumo Festival for New Sounds on November 14th 2010. The concert was projected on a six channel system. A stunning, well paced and concentrated performance in which modern computer techniques collide with complex ananlogue synth playing. A dynamic tour de force from these legends of modern electronic music housed in a dazzling Stephen O'Malley cover.

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A Young Persons Guide to Mark McGuire collects together some of this Emeralds members best works, previously released on a number of limited editions CDr and tape releases over the last 4 years. Although, only 24 years of age McGuire has racked up an impressive canon which most artists twice his age would have problems delivering. With his expert use of loops and layers, as well a superb ear for killer melody hooks makes AYPGTMM simply an essential collection.

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It would be too easy to simply call IIRON the COH metal album, as it goes way beyond that. True, this album of classic Pavlov stompers contains more than its fair share of guitars both acoustic and electric, yet it still maintains that sense of power and purpose through electronic music which stands out as the COH 'raison d'être'. Coming 11 years after IRON, which also tackled the sound of rock with alarming results, the new album features not only recent guitar tracks recorded at Music Research Centre at York University, but also recordings made during Soviet era Russia, which refer to Pavlov's underground music activities in the early 80-ies when making or even consuming of "metal music" was forbidden.

IIRON is a powerful, well executed electronic rock record, with just a dash a humour to keep it from becoming pompous, as so much of that kind of music can be sometimes. Packaged in a 4 panel digipack for CD, and lavish gatefold for the vinyl, with stunning artwork by Stephen O'Malley.

in memoriam:
Satoshi Kon
Peter Christopherson

HAIL TO WORLD PEACE AND DEATH TO FALSE METAL

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Live In Japan Part Two is the second part of two separately-released live albums from the legendary trio Fenn O'Berg (Christian Fennesz, Jim O'Rourke and Peter Rehberg), featuring recordings taken from their 2009 Japanese tour.

editions mego

Live In Japan Part One is the first part of two separately-released live albums from the legendary trio Fenn O'Berg (Christian Fennesz, Jim O'Rourke and Peter Rehberg), featuring recordings taken from their 2009 Japanese tour.

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After the runaway success of their 'Does It Look Like I'm Here?' album Editions Mego is chuffed to release these vintage synth-guitar improvisation jams recorded straight to tape 2007-2008. Previously released as a CD by No Fun this is now the definitive vinyl edition of this material, and serves as archival insight into the development of their sound over the last years.

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'Returnal' is the 4th album from Daniel Lopatin's Oneohtrix Point Never project, after 'Betrayed In The Octagon (Deception Island, 2007), 'Zones Without People (Arbor, 2009) and 'Russian Mind' (No Fun, 2009). All 3 albums being superbly compiled on the 'Rifts' double CD set (No Fun, 2009).

It sees Lopatin fine tune his craft for creation of deep atmospheres and texture even further. Starting off with the mind blowing triptych of 'Nil Admiari'/'Describing Bodies'/'Stress Waves', which fires off into a noise/rhythm excess before entering a zone of relative calm building to the melancholy of the final part. This set the tone perfectly for the albums title track, a stunning out of this world ballad featuring Lopatin's near desperate vocal delivery, ending what could be seen as one of his most chilling and thought provoking sides to date.

The atmosphere is slightly lifted as the darkened sun comes up over the ruins on 'Pelham Island Road' and 'Where Does Time Go', with the album closing with edgy broken beats and fourth world possible landscapes of 'Preyouandi', which fades into the distance with echoes of the 'Returnal' chorus, closing the loop. What's burnt into memory here is Lopatin's love affair with the long, slow path back home... the cycle... the hypnotic sector... the ghost in the machine... and whether people are making dance music or hip hop or space head music or metal, the ouroboros is present in every sector -- as it was in Bach's study, and in the elephant songs of the Ituri forests.

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Thats right, they're back! After a hiatus of almost 9 years the legendary trio of Christian Fennesz, Jim O'Rourke and Peter Rehberg have returned with a new studio album. Technically the first studio album as previous releases were edits of live performances.

They spent a week in Studio GOK Sound, Tokyo to lay down some stunning electronic works. Whereas previously the emphasis was on a chaotic blend of found samples mangled through their mobile computing systems to create a humorous oddball sound, 'In Stereo' implements a more wider instrumental palette of analogue & digital synthesis, guitar, piano, bass and percussion. What they do maintain is the ability to make a near psychedelic audio blend where its impossible to determine who does what.

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Fenn O'Berg (Christian Fennesz, Jim O'Rourke and Peter Rehberg) first hit the scene after a surprise appearance at the Nickelsdorf Festival in 1997. Throughout 1998 and 1999 the trio toured extensively throughout Austria, Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, Switzerland and Spain, as well as shows in North America and Japan. The highlights of these trips were presented on 'The Magic Sound'. Although they were not first group to utilise mainly mobile computing devices, they were the first to bring such a set up to venues that would not normally book or even be interested in such things. This resulted in some very polarised reactions from both audience and promoters alike. In many instances the group needed to 'escape' the city they played. In Rome Jim O'Rourke was even given an acoustic guitar and more or less forced to play a short acoustic set before anyone could leave the building. Despite all of this, there was a generally positive response, with some shows going down as local legend. However its worth considering that the technology at the tine didn't offer the convenience of 'plug in and play' of current operating systems and applications. This of course led to set of recordings like no other. Not only was the rule book ripped up but the tour book as well. Each show became an improvised twisted journey through the various strands of electronic music where popular music sources (some more obvious than others) clashed with more academic tricks, but never sounding like being part of either. By 2002, the groups live output was drastically reduced due to all three members schedules moving in different directions. Only two performances were committed that year, and although the sound was more polished and one could even suggest that 'they knew what they were doing', their polarising effect was still there. One show was a sold out over enthusiastic Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the other a miserable 'count them on one hand' turnout at a jazz club in Vienna. Edited highlights of these shows made up 'The Return Of..'.

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Peter Rehberg's collaboration with the Paris based puppeteer and choreographer, Gisèle Vienne began in 2001, with the production of the DACM piece 'ShowroomDummies', followed by 'Stereotypie' in 2003.

In 2004, Vienne started to direct under her own name and began to work on pieces collaborating on text with US author, Dennis Cooper. This CD is a document of selected audio parts of all Gisèle Vienne productions made between 2004 and 2008, except for the epic 'Kindertotenlieder', whose audio material was presented on the various KTL releases in 2006 and 2007 (eMEGO 084, eMEGO 085).

The range here is vast from the upfront noise excess of the 'I Apologize' (2004) tracks to the lonely synth passages which were used in 'Une Belle Enfant Blonde' (2005), and the sad coda used for 'Jerk', which began as a radio play for Radio France Culture in 2007, before being adapted for stage in 2008. The opening 'Murder Version' is a version of the recording 'Meurtre' by Catherine Robbe-Grillet & Jonathan Capdevielle, which was released as a single sided 12" vinyl in 2005 (UBEB 001), and is to be considered as a tribute to the Alain Robbe-Grillet film 'Glissements progressifs du plaisir' (1974). Although this material was intended for consumption in a theatrical setting, it has been edited with domestic use in mind ultimately representing that the grey zone where puppetry, literature, contemporary theatre & dance, visual art, and extreme computer music meet.

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At last, Kevin Drumm's classic 2002 album sees a full vinyl release, including a bonus track. Crank it! Utilizing guitar, tapes, mics, pedals, analog synthesizer and some computer assistance, Chicago's own Kevin Drumm concocted a sonic beast with Sheer Hellish Miasma. One is taken on an intense journey of storming feedback, open audio onslaught and somewhat savaged sonics. The extreme end of anarchic electronics and possibly a hint of musical violence is present throughout much of the disc. An essential release capturing Drumm at his most ferocious and most inventive. It's an exhilarating, visceral test of endurance brimming with demonic humor and a tour of Drumm's ever-expanding sonic palette. For seasoned noise veterans, Sheer Hellish Miasma offers a bracing soundscape filled with exquisitely abrasive textures and more than enough hidden detail to warrant repeated listening -- a distinct voice in the increasingly same-sounding world of abstract electronic noise. For everyone else, Drumm's journey through the noisy underworld is likely to inspire fear or, in an optimistic case, fearful admiration. This reissue comes with an additional track, "Impotent Hummer," taken from the same period -- a 13-minute drone piece that draws the listener into the forthcoming blizzard. In total? A din of arms, the fierce swell of damaged drone and the shriek of subtle, shifting sonic slaughter ... for the seasoned, a bountiful sonic feast awaits, for the meek it's intense and rewarding -- noise rarely sounds this exhilarating.

Crank it!

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Of course, Jim O'Rourke needs no introduction being well known as a performer, producer and all round top chap, as well membership of various pop and rock combos for more than two decades. 'Im Happy, and I'm Singing, and a 1, 2, 3, 4' was called by many common folk Jim's laptop record or his powerbook album. We prefer the simple term computer when referring to the instrument used for the creation of this milestone album. Equal parts - schizoid pop, cracked minimalism, concrete drama and melancholic contemplation. It strikes us as a highly personal release. Given the nature of this warm beast, it seems likely to appeal across the board - electronic nuts, indie rock kids and yes, even the good folk of the established experimental world may take pleasure in the delicate nuances of Jim's hard drive. This reissue is long overdue (the album being out of print for 5 years), and comes with a bonus disc featuring unreleased material from same period sourced from Jim's vast archive, as well as new artwork.

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Over the course of a year, Keith Fullerton Whitman performed a piece of live electronic music a few dozen times entitled "Generator." The debut was given in San Francisco at Root Strata's "On Land" festival at Cafe Du Nord on September 19th, 2009 … over the months that followed stagings took place in venues ranging from flooded basements to festival stages in Baltimore, Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, Easthampton, Iowa City, Jamaica Plain, Northampton, Raleigh, Saint Louis, San Francisco, Somerville, & Washington D.C.

This LP covers the final two performances of the piece over two consecutive evenings ; the opening solo set from the final night of "High Zero" festival in Baltimore at the Theater Project, September 26th, 2010, then the performance during the "For Eliane" night of the "Propensity of Sound" festival dedicated to Eliane Radigue's work at Issue Project Room, Brooklyn, September 27th, 2010. These recordings show the piece in two different iterations, taking two different trajectories entirely. They're considered as the definitive versions of the piece.

Composed for, and realized with a scalable selection of digital & analogue modular synthesis equipment, "Generator" was at attempt to wrest a viable performance-based music out what had until then been a solitary set of sound-design tools. The piece grew out of a frustration with the limitlessness of computer-based real-time synthesis & algorithmic / generative systems vs. their utter failure as performance solutions. It hinges heavily on the ideology of the "Playthroughs" system (in that the subtle tuning inconsistencies of a physical instrument - the electric guitar - could be amplified & multiplied) through the use of multiple layerings of different topologies of oscillator, yielding an unstable array of modal canons that drift in & out of "tune," causing all manner of inter-voice beating & assorted psycho-acoustic effects.

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Follow up to the award winning 'Live Salvage 1997->2000' CD (MEGO 012, 2000). Hot on the heels of recent collaborative releases with Florian Hecker (as HASWELL & HECKER) on Warner Classics and WARP Records, Russell Haswell (b.1970. Coventry, UK) presents the second volume of his LIVE SALVAGE archive series. Documenting improvised real-time, computer-generated audio-presentations given over the past 10 years, in different types of venues all with contrasting acoustics and audiences.

Editions Mego is proud to announce this double vinyl set.

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