Editions Mego HHV Records 53 Items

With the demise of the group Wire in 1980, founder members Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis joined forces to create Dome. With the assistance of engineer Eric Radcliffe and his Blackwing Studio Dome took the ethic of »using the studio as a compositional tool« and recorded and released three Dome albums on their own label in the space of 12 months: »Dome« (July 1980), »Dome 2« (October 1980) and »Dome 3« (October 1981). A final fourth album, »Will You Speak this World: Dome 3« was released on the Norwegian Uniton label in May 1983.

These albums represent some of the most beautifuly stark and above all timeless exercises in studio experimentation from early 1980s alternative music scene.

With the demise of the group Wire in 1980, founder members Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis joined forces to create Dome. With the assistance of engineer Eric Radcliffe and his Blackwing Studio Dome took the ethic of »using the studio as a compositional tool« and recorded and released three Dome albums on their own label in the space of 12 months: »Dome« (July 1980), »Dome 2« (October 1980) and »Dome 3« (October 1981). A final fourth album, »Will You Speak this World: Dome 3« was released on the Norwegian Uniton label in May 1983.

These albums represent some of the most beautifuly stark and above all timeless exercises in studio experimentation from early 1980s alternative music scene.

With the demise of the group Wire in 1980, founder members Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis joined forces to create Dome. With the assistance of engineer Eric Radcliffe and his Blackwing Studio Dome took the ethic of »using the studio as a compositional tool« and recorded and released three Dome albums on their own label in the space of 12 months: »Dome« (July 1980), »Dome 2« (October 1980) and »Dome 3« (October 1981). A final fourth album, »Will You Speak this World: Dome 3« was released on the Norwegian Uniton label in May 1983.

These albums represent some of the most beautifuly stark and above all timeless exercises in studio experimentation from early 1980s alternative music scene.

Editions Mego presents The Psychologist, the sophomore album by the Istanbul born and raised, Berlin based electronic music composer and sound artist Hüma Utku. As the title suggests, The Psychologist, is a series of sonic essays based around themes of psychological phenomena and can be read as a musical enquiry into the human condition. With Utku’s background as a graduate of Psychology and her current practice as a conceptual music composer we see the two main threads in her professional career intertwine on this unique and ambitious release. Including recordings of Buchla 200 from Utku’s Elektronmusikstudion residency in October 2020,The Psychologist is a genre aversive work that embodies elements of synthesiser music, electroacoustic, experimental techno, industrial, modern composition and spoken word. Piano, string compositions and vocals hold weight throughout a number of pieces providing a dramatic acoustic edge to the psychological explorations contained within. The foreboding mood of much of this release is the product of investigation that lends the unsettling theme of anticipatory grief to the mood of the tracks Light of All Lights and Continuing Bonds. Islands of Consciousness refers to Jungian metaphor for consciousness whilst the unnerving Rüya twists around dream analysis in Gestalt psychology. Fuel For The Flames proceeds as a buzzing and swirling representation of alchemy and psychological symbolism. Dissolution of I is haunted by a strange sensation of dissociation whilst defense mechanisms support the sublime Sublimation. The bright shapes of Chironian Wound represent archetypes and analytical psychology whilst the fried soundscapes and rhythms of Ataxia encapture neurological states. The results unravel with both the clockwork rhythms of the human body and the unpredictable nature of the psyche, the pieces follow arrhythmic patterns in a harmonious way. It tells the raw and intimate story of the human experience with a new work whereby the predictable operates in parallel with the unexpected and like human experience itself, is dark and complex.

Vinyl contains ‘Ohne Sonne’ and ’47 Blues’ previously only available on the Japenese CD versions. As well as an new extended version of ‘Happy Audio’ exclusive to this format.

"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.lell" 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 be a classic of its time, topping many end of year polls. This new definitive edition is newly mixed by Fennesz resulting in a more open sounding version of the tracks, especially the marimba driven "Caecilia", the hypnotic "Before I Leave", and the towering "Happy Audio". In addition 2 extra titles are included: "Badminton Girl", originally released in 2001 as part of the Split #15 12" with Main on Fat Cat Records (12fat045), now out of print. "Endless", previously unreleased.

Second phantasmagorical audio outing from former Seefeel and Loops Haunt members, Mark Clifford and Scott Gordon. ‘Two’ expands the duo’s unique take on spectral synthesis incorporating a diverse amount of approaches to experimental sound. Two expounds a hybrid mix of acoustic based audio design, ambient tonality, sound effects, music, abstraction and world’s hybrid video game soundtrack.

There is something of an onomatopoeia quality to the release as the six tracks take on the character of their individual title. Silt, Dapple, Overcurve, Scutter, Strain and Plates appear as extremely well executed versions of the inferred intent of their namesake. This inquisitive approach will appeal to those interested in the more exploratory end of sound production providing hope as newly formed methods and colours are exposed from the duo’s contemporary audio tactics.

Seasoned veterans can lie in a bed of laurels whereas ‘Two’ is an exemplary release revelling in the enthusiasm that comes from the joy of unabated exploration.

Individually, Jim O’Rourke and Christian Fennesz have been responsible for numerous legendary works which merge the traditional avant-garde with contemporary sensibilities. The signature of both O’Rourke and Fennesz cohabit this new release with O’Rourke’s gurgling harmonies swimming amongst the shimmering frequencies and strummed melodies produced by Fennesz. Two side long tracks situate themselves as a warm electronic adventure. Simultaneously radical and comforting these works shift from gentle sonorities to fully distorted explosions all of which reside within a template of tension between musical and non-music matter.

»grain« is the third Innode release following on from Gridshifter in 2013 and syn in 2021.

A new methodology to make the album is applied yet again from the trio of Bernhard Breuer, Steven Hess and Stefan Németh. The approach is more an anti approach where the trio let the process of creation itself steer the development of the recording, without any prior conceptual agenda.

Irregular rhythmic patterns often served as the initial springboard for each piece with Breuer creating a loop either by playing drums or with the aid of a modelling percussion synthesizer. The results often bypass existing formulaic grids. The outfit embraced these anti-precision steps building shapes around the tarnished templates.

The process of building upon the core structures laid forth alters throughout. In the case of »Splitter« you can hear an example of Bernhard´s core loops dominating a skeletal audio sphere. The title of the track »Impactopium« reflects the process of its construction being a conglomeration of individual titles meshed into a whole. The audio is a non-linear compendium of several fragments of individual elements. A conscious method of exploring a more decentralised architecture saw three disparate elements layered randomly on top of each other with some synths added as a sonic seasoning at the later stages.

Elsewhere sonic elements are restructured in unusual ways. One member's contribution is completely stripped away, quiet sounds captured with contact mics are highly amplified, the last track introduces twisted themes of the first track.

The title »grain« refers to the roughness resulting from these explorations. It also takes note of the term grain as used in analogue photography or in the case of audio as a distorted signal, or »noise.« All of these elements, normally eschewed, are here embraced as a thematic thread to instigate the exploratory proceedings.

This is a playbox of inventiveness, a hall of mirrors and an endless search for unusual tactics and fresh results.

Tackling the initial loop tracks from a wide variety of strategic approaches Innode has concocted a strangely cohesive work. From sparse source material to heavy overdubs of overdubs »grain« is a uplifting collection of works from this relentlessly curious and exploratory Austrian outfit. Humans make the work but the random embracing of unexpected processes means the gentleman of the outfit is not fully ruling what becomes of these works.

Dismantling the acoustic to feed the electronic, Editions Mego presents Telepath, the new album by Material Object. Born out of a single improvised recording session with a lone Violinist, Telepath is a startling album of future electronic music, resulting in an LP of unique and timeless tracks that reimagine a classic sound for an endless future. Boldly departing from his previous canon of largely 'ambient' work, Material Object's Telepath renders itself out as something much stranger, something more spacious, more subtle and gradual. Moments of bouncing minimalism meet moirés of delayed pure tones phasing in and out of resolution, giving way to a series of strobing foreground gestures arranged and offset in disorienting landscapes which scatter themselves asymmetrically amongst crystal pools of reverb. Revelling in the creative dismemberment of the original source material, Material Object slowly and patiently induces the violin to undergo every category of torsion, pressure and rupture. Its vivid acoustic qualities pass over and across the event horizon of the digital domain. Shattering then crystallising into points and coordinates, intersections, disjunctions, planes and reverberant figures. An uncanny geometry perceived only between the ears, at once dissolving and reconstructing itself. Not to be missed here is the essential, but bonus only, add-on (available with all Bandcamp purchases) "Auxiliary Apparition", a hallucinatory expanse that traverses the same liminal geography as the LP proper but as some refracted, ghostly counterpoint. More nocturnal, overpowering phantasms looming out of a droning noise floor before fading away. A hypnotic and time-dilated recapitulation of what's gone before as if looking back from beyond a mirror. When it finally resolves in the closing moments and returns you home, you realise you haven't really moved at all. Equally abstract, haunting and daring, Material Object’s Telepath is a singular work that abandons all notions of genre. Erupting with a tension of opposites that unfolds as a truly unique story, told in four dimensions and draped in deafening colour.

On her third album, Berlin-based Dutch-Italian composer and sound designer Aimée Portioli, aka Grand River, asks what guiding forces might be driving, enticing, and affecting us. “All Above” is rooted in her deeply personal philosophy as an artist, blurring the boundaries between electronic music and acoustic music and sculpting familiar ambient forms into personal themes painted with rich emotional colours. Written painstakingly over the last two years, the album is the most ambitious and divergent set of music Portioli has assembled so far, with a wide variety of instrumentation (including voices, strings, organs, guitars, and synthesisers) focused around the piano. She‘s keen to assure listeners that while that instrument isn‘t always heard, it‘s constantly at the forefront of the album, shepherding its emotions and anchoring its mood. It makes sense then that on the opening track ‘Quasicristallo’, the acoustic piano is the first element we hear, recorded closely, so its characteristic rattle and creak can speak as loudly as the familiar tones themselves. When the music blooms into abstraction and processed electronics, it‘s almost imperceptible: reverb mutates into ghostly vapour trails, and distortion forms the keys into another instrument entirely.

A potentially surprising release on Editions Mego. Another planned prior to the untimely passing of Peter Rehberg in 2021. Melvin Gibbs is the renowned bass player and producer from Brooklyn who’s vast resume includes playing with Sonny Sharrock, John Zorn, The Rollins Band, Dead Prez, Caetano Veloso and Femi Kuti amongst others. A solid resume, no doubt, but what is Gibbs doing on Editions Mego? Behind the scenes, those who know Gibbs knew that amongst all this he was also tinkering away at another form of music, one which skirts around the border between music and sound design. The Wave is the first release that reveals this side of Gibbs’ creative output to those outside his inner circle. The driving force for this output is Gibbs’ multi-decade friendship with acclaimed American video artist and cinematographer Arthur Jafa. Over the course of time Gibbs and Jafa have had many conversations about music and the connection between film and music. Jafa’s desire to make film that worked the way Black (as in Black/African-American/ Afro-diasporic peoples) music worked inspired Gibbs to study the filmmakers Serge Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov and incorporate their philosophies and tactics when recording his own music. The two discussed sound design which directly informed Gibbs’ choice of music making tools and led to him acquiring Symbolic Systems Kyma software and hardware, incorporating this as a composition tool and sound design and component in his work. These conversations bore concrete fruit through Gibbs’ work for Tneg, the film studio Jafa ran with filmmakers Malik Sayeed and Elissa Blount Moorhead. Gibbs created the soundtrack for their very first project, the short film “Deshotten 1.0” (2009 - directed by Jafa and Sayeed) as well as their Martin Luther King-inspired meditation on Black life “Dreams Are Colder Than Death” (2013, directed by Jafa) The bass-forward music, or ‘sonics’ as Gibbs calls it, emerged from an alternative mode of contemplation, a mode that he sees as closer to the mindset of a rootworker, an African-American herbal doctor who cures psychic ailments using means derived from African spiritual practice, entering a forest to find the right plants for a suffering client than a mediator attempting to invoke mindfulness. Gibbs says this practice yields results that suggest an aural form of creation akin to coagulation, a formal movement that gives the sense that a flow of sounds can emit something bearing resemblance to solidifying objects. In 2020 Jafa asked Gibbs to work on the soundtrack for a work in progress called “The Wave''. When they got together to work on the soundtrack, Jafa played Gibbs a selection of sounds that included random moments of (probably unwanted) feedback on 70's Miles Davis records, Pop Smoke's Brooklyn drill, the music of Bernard Gunter and Darmstadt-style compositions made with test equipment. Those sounds, filtered through years of conversation with Jafa about Black creativity and the possible evolution of Black music, formed the sonic vocabulary of “The Wave”. Over time the sonics evolved and “The Wave” became the piece Jafa calls "aghdra". This soundtrack incorporates and expands upon the sonics composed for “The Wave”. Gibbs mentions although the work with Jafa has always skirted these lines of evolution, this side of his vocabulary has been generally neglected, until now, due to his current jazz musician/jazz festival-centric focus and radar. The result of this parallel exploration is a deep excursion into a nuanced sound world. The rich tapestry of textures allows one's mind to explore and project within this bed of curious investigation of sound. The bristling, itching, restless, clicking, diving nature of the electronic sound world presented by Gibbs, is abstract and unearthly on the surface but closer listening (which it demands) reveals a very human quality to these austere shapes. It may be a universe apart from his work in the field of jazz but stands high amongst the more experimental work found amongst the Editions Mego catalogue and like Jafa’s work in film is a triumph of exploratory forms.

Hotel Paral.lel, released in 1997, marks the full length debut release from Austrian Christian Fennesz, originally released by Mego, following the twitching drone as found on the 1995 EP Instrument, also included in this deluxe 2LP reissue. Once launched, Hotel Paral.lel was to instigate a sublime exploration of a wide variety of forms, from formal abstraction to shimmering drone around to ground zero glitch pop. Recorded just before mobile computing devices became omnipresent it was an investigation into the sonic possibilities residing in guitar based digital music. Sz launches the career with a constantly buzzing sound that resembles a fax machine encountering a G3 laptop for the first time, realising the game is up. Nebenraum is the first foray into the style for which one would attribute to Fennesz. A glacial drone unexpectedly morphs into a gorgeous melody and microscopic groove. Adding pulse and melody was hearsay in the radical end of experimental music up until this point and with this single gesture, everything changed, for everyone. Blok M nails this trajectory home with a straight up 4/4 beat. Such rhythm also features on Fa with a euphoric mix of a thudding beat, sharp splinters of noise and a devastating exploding melody. Repetition plays heavily through this album as the hyper metronomic beat on traxdata lays a bed for all manner of buzzing electronics. On the closing “Aus” we see a glimpse of what was to come in the future works of Fennesz, an experiment in popping, bubbling pulse pop. A far more darker and experimental work than Fennesz’ subsequent work. This is an exquisite radical field of freeform noise, sliced techno beats and subtle ambient texture all coming together to create a timeless work. There’s little out there in the world of music, still to this day, that sounds remotely like Hotel Paral.lel. With a radical reinvention of music Hotel Paral.lel is an essential addition to collectors of pioneering music in the late 20th Century and sounds as enthralling today as it did to the shocked ears occupying 1997.

Nik Colk Void is well established with her work - using modular systems, voice and guitar - as one half of Factory Floor, one third of Carter Tutti Void (alongside Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti) and with the late Peter Rehberg as Npvr, but perhaps surprisingly, 'Bucked Up Space' is her first solo album release.

Void explains, “When Peter Rehberg initially asked me to produce a record for Editions Mego, I didn't feel quite ready and asked if we could make a record together instead. Collaboration is so ingrained into what I do, I only felt ready to make this album after working through ideas live, using the audience in place of the collaborator.”

Bucked Up Space combines Void’s love of improvisation with the driving force of beat-driven music absorbed from performing in galleries, residencies and clubs across the UK and Europe. She goes on to say, “You find out more about yourself when you explain your ideas to others, and that’s how I felt the live performance worked for me.”

The process steadily teased out a language and Void employed a variety of tactics in the recording process including a methodical approach of collecting data at her home studio in a manner not dissimilar to keeping a diary. Her microscopic focus on raw instrumental noise, layered and reformulated, resulted in a sound catalogue that Void divided into groups for their tone, density and texture.

First time vinyl issue of this 1997 Mego classic. General Magic, the duo of Ramon Bauer and Andi Pieper, who, alongside Pita, first pioneered the classic Mego sound on the Fridge Trax 12” in 1995. The following year proved to be formulative when Mego released Frantz alongside a slew of game changing releases from Farmers Manuel, Pita and Fennesz.

Originally released as Mego 010 Frantz presented a thrilling digression from what was in vogue in music at the time. This was the advent of portable computing and the Vienna based label was at the forefront of harnessing the potential of audio within this new technology.

At once smart and playful these releases reconfigured once disparate genres such as industrial, techno, glitch and the avant garde, folding them into a bright, audacious and euphoric new system of sound. The music on Frantz (named after the Austrian skier, Franz Klammer) still pushes the boundaries of acceptable audio constructions with it’s startling fried electricity and twisted sensibility. The sense of joy in the audio discovery is palatable as techno laced explorations unfold a variety of unexpected and unprecedented sonic manoeuvres.

Tyrell launches proceedings as schizophrenic stuttering handclaps simultaneously slice into pieces as it propels forward. The bending of the brain is on display with the likes of ‘Obvious’ and ‘Close, But Not Quien’. Temko skewers digital debris in which a ghost melody comes to the fore. Brazen rhythms mobilize the tracks ‘No Ketting’ and ‘Bonden’ whilst the Official GM Ski-WM Theme is a short stab of priceless pop wizardry skittering about a strange exhilarating melody in homage to the finest of winter activities.

This reissue also includes ‘Die Mondlandung’ which was released as a 12” in 1995 (Mego 002), and has never been released anywhere, physical or digital, since. This track is based on the live German TV coverage of the moon landing. An apt theme for the abundance of exploration contained within this classic release.

Editions Mego welcomes Powell to its roster with a bizarre and strangely emotive new LP of synthetic computer works entitled Piano Music 1-7.

Via his own Diagonal Records imprint, his work on XL Recordings and, most recently, the opening of audio/film platform A Folder [afolder.studio], Powell has firm footing in the contemporary electronic landscape. During a wry and obstinate musical life he has twisted myriad synthetic forms into shapes that explore and expand upon the districts of post-punk, techno, noise + computer music, and in the the last year alone he has released four albums of hi-def abstractions, each inspired by a formalisation of music proposed by Iannis Xenakis.

As an extension of this intense period of work/research/play with stochastic functions [using probabilities to compose music], various processes emerged that Powell then began to apply to more traditional musical events. Where ordinarily in his work the probabilities and relationships are used to define parameters such as wave-shape, folding, FM, filter modes etc., he now began to use them to create musical formations and visual scores that could be played back using any software/MIDI instrument [one of these can be seen on the rear cover of the LP release]. While mapping out this cartography of relations, he used a basic Grand Steinway sampler as a placeholder instrument; the longer the process went on, though, the more he began to embrace the acoustic properties of the synthetic piano and make it the bedrock for this new constellation of work.

Piano Music 1-7, subtitled ‘Music for Synthetic Piano and Assorted Electronics’, consists of seven different synthetic islands strung together into a single composition. All were composed using the aforementioned processes that allowed Powell to play a piano, even if he never learned to do so with his hands. After all, ’In writing electronic music,’ Robin Mackay once wrote, ‘you also have to direct the invention of new tools.’ Recorded in late 2020, these new Powell works propose not just a bold and bright vision of electronic music but serve also as a map with which, for 35 minutes at least, we can navigate our way out of the current milieu. As the artist himself remarks in the sleeve-notes, ‘. . . What emerged from this fog or soup [for me] were ideas and processes that felt affirmative and life giving — sensations I had always hoped to convey in my music. Perhaps the optimism or positivity I felt at these musical events unfolding, these clusters and knots tumbling in different directions across time, can also be felt by you.’

Gonzen, uminari or retumbos. Perhaps you’ve heard these sounds? They’re known to occur all over the world and, as one might expect, humans have strained to offer various explanations for these unsettling emissions that materialise unbidden from the sky.

We like to say that we’ve understood what’s happening so that we can move on. Tidy up the loose ends and don’t scare the horses. Nothing wrong with that in good measure, but there’s something to be said for the Haudenosaunee peoples’ explanation. They pointed out that the Great Spirit hasn’t finished their work of shaping the earth and is making a fair bit of noise while they’re at it.

If you accept that many questions never truly get answered, in fact can or should never truly be answered, you may be able to tune your mind to this collection of lingering sonic detonations. If you accept that the work is ongoing, our labours seldom done, that there’s not much point talking about the end of anything, you may be ready to join us. It’s not our task to finish it, nor are we free to desist.

Written and produced by Anthony Child and Daniel Bean. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu at Schwebung Mastering, February 2021. Cut by Andreas Kauffelt at Schnittstelle, Berlin, April 2021

Marcus Schmickler's music is designed for multi-channel sound projections and references German electronic music tradition, spectral music, experimentalism as well as 1990s club music. His artistic practice explores avant-garde trajectories in electronic music composition, formal systems, sonification and psychoacoustics. Emego 296 features two new major works from this audacious sound explorer.

Throughout his career, JG Thirlwell has adopted many masks: His work under the Foetus moniker has taken on everything from big band to opera to noise-rock. Steroid Maximus embraced exotica and the world of soundtracks, while his Manorexia project continued his quest to the outer limits of contemporary composition and musique concrete. Now we have ‘Omniverse’, the second release under the moniker Xordox. Xordox is a synthesizer-based project, and on this evocative album we see the project branch into many new avenues.

Fantas is the epic opening track on Caterina Barbieri’s acclaimed 2019 release Ecstatic Computation. The original Fantas laid out a magical path of patterns leading the listener on a journey into the sound itself. Fantas Variations maps out eight new potentials sprung from this initial path as constructed by a diverse mix of artists lending to a wide spectrum of new works extrapolated from the original work. For this project Barbieri invited friends and long time collaborators from a variety of musical backgrounds to create a more sustainable and inclusive landscape in terms of stylistic, geographical, gender and generational balance. The results are a diverse array of approaches and instrumentation which blur the boundaries between the acoustic and electronic.

Fantas Variations embraces a platform for mutual exchange and support between like-minded artists, where active and collective re-imagination is prioritised over the traditional model of remixes, which is often strategic, functional and more passive.

Longtime friend and collaborator Kali Malone rearranged Fantas to a slowed-down, austere and eerie version for two Organs. Evelyn Saylor created a piece for a vocal ensemble consisting of her, Lyra Pramuk, Stine Janvin and Annie Garlid, joining forces to express the choral, psychedelic and vitalistic nature of the piece. Barbieri’s former guitar professor at the Conservatory in Bologna, Walter Zanetti, composes Fantas for electric guitar, by translating every single gesture of the original electronic piece into a personal, nuanced and detailed interpretation. Bendik Giske’s reinterpretation for Saxophone and Voice captures the atmospheric essence of Fantas and its psychic meteorology. Longtime collaborator and along with Barbieri the other half of the outfit Punctum, Carlo Maria, resynthesizes Fantas for Tr808 and Mc202, bringing a more club-oriented dimension of the piece to life whilst unveiling the sonic continuum between rhythm and pitch through a sensitive timbral approach. Jay Mitta’s Singeli reinterpretation of Fantas transpires with pitched-up percussion and turbo-fast polyrhythmic patterns unleashing the frenetic, shifting, transformative matter within the piece to a higher plain of euphoric dance. Baseck’s variation is a rave fantasia, where the prismatic trance of the original is channeled into fierce, uncompromising hardcore, whilst Kara-Lis Coverdale’s take is a phantasmagoria for piano that gently, yet inexorably, captures the relentlessness chimerical qualities of the original, unveiling its spectral backbone.

Swedish producer and electronic enthusiast Rivet (Mika Hallbäck Vuorenpää, Malmö) joins the Editions Mego fold with a dynamic and diverse album that pivots between the punctuated pop of Ivan Pavlov's COH project, the chromatic slink of Chris and Cosey whilst also bearing a degree of fruit birthed from Hallbäck's home country Sweden in skewered pop such as The Knife. This is electronic music born from the worship of machines and the spirit of punk, mood music brooding with sophistication and subversive twists all underscored with a deep industrial pulse.

Having spent decades carving out his very particular niche which takes influence from a vast range of extreme music this is Russell’s nostalgic nod to his influences whilst forging onwards with his perpetually unforeseen experience. Working in a variety of media over decades Haswell’s belligerence towards his craft and critique of others has allowed him to operate in a zone outside of peers. As daunting as it is refreshing Haswell’s output is always on the very edge of genre.

A new timley studio album from the duo of Peter Rehberg and Stephen O’Malley. Recorded and mixed during an unexpected extended stay in Berlin when the borders of the world suddenly closed. The claustrophobic urgency of this scenario is seared into the colossal vibrations set into this vinyl release. Unlike many of their releases this is a studio record made unto itself as opposed to the many soundtracks they have made for theatre works and the like. It also stands as one of their most fully realised releases to date.

In the process of relocating to Den Bosch's Willem Twee Studios, The Transcendence Orchestra let love slip deftly out of its gate and reverberate around the walls of the studio's main hall, a high ceilinged former synagogue in the city's old town. Working intensively to capture its echoes, they coaxed it to appear in pipes and strings, directed it through resonant circuits and shepherded it round the room with beaters, horns and rattles.

Having returned home with the recordings, a purpose began to emerge. Through a process of extensive reconfiguration and testing it became clear that the love contained within could transform perception. Under the right circumstances, and accompanied by appropriate technology, it could serve as a map for navigating beginnings and endings. Like some distant mesmerising chant or a psychedelic folk song, it could connect us and reassure us that we can pass through the boundaries and survive. Perhaps not intact but at least whole.

Here is that map, love soaked diligently into its lines, ready to guide those at a loss or reassure those willing to explore.

“Like La Monte Young and The Incredible String Band stuck in an elevator."

Written and produced by Anthony Child and Daniel Bean Mastered by Stephan Mathieu at Schwebung Mastering, January 2020 Cut by Andreas Kauffelt at Schnitstelle, Berlin, February 2020 Cover art by Vidya Gastaldon: L’ange de l’apocalypse (d’après Danby), 2012 / Acrylic and oil on canvas / 100 x 150 cm (39 3/8 x 59 in)

The Oystercatcher is the first collaborative LP from Cucina Povera (Maria Rossi) and ELS (Edward Simpson) Recorded in London over two days, hours’ worth of improvisations have been edited down to form these six tracks. A fragile interplay is at work between Maria’s drifting vocals and the ominous churn of Edward’s modular synth. Each sonic element takes a turn at leading the way.

The opening track ‘Mantle’ is formed from sparse, monolithic electronics, woven gently with a thread of vocals. In the closing track ‘Eon’ Maria’s voice shepherds spontaneous bursts of sounds, almost Rave-like if order were imposed, through 15 minutes of turmoil and resplendent until the end. Maria’s vocals make their own trails amongst the noise, bringing to mind the the exploratory language from Ursula K. Le Guin’s album ‘Music and Poetry from the Kesh’, recalling the same understated mystery.

The overall effect of this collaboration is a completely unique creation albeit within a recognisable lineage of predecessors. The artwork reflects the vision of these two artists, collaged together. Both images are from a trip to Helsinki. Edward’s photograph of Tulips caught after dark are reviled by a flash. Maria’s seemingly abstract drawing is a graphite rubbing taken from a granite slab of a pavement somewhere in Kallio. Together the two images represent two different methods for capturing a city’s haptic landscape.

The album moves with a feeling of transience, which is no surprise given that the idea to collaborate was formed in Helsinki, realised in London and edited together in Rotterdam. The Oystercatcher tells a fragile tale, one that spins out into the unknown. A cold union of voice and machine, still tentative and probing, learning to co-exist. A kind of fundamental shift whereby shared moments have been turned to sound. The Oystercatcher is a bird that can freely travel between the earth, sea and sky. The motif is taken from a Tove Jansson short story. A dead bird washes ashore, two different versions of events are presented to how the bird came to die. The album feels like two different stories being presented on top of one another but ultimately coming to the same tragic conclusion.

C. Lavender is a New York based sound artist and sound healing practitioner whose third full-length album explores meditative physical rituals of sound with binaural recordings from inside a geodesic dome in the Catskill Mountains of New York.

“The future is a choice between utopia and oblivion,” noted architect, futurist and geodesic dome theorist Buckminster Fuller. Myth of Equilibrium delves into these divergent paths by featuring equal parts of pastoral raw acoustic percussion combined with C. Lavender’s signature “devastating caustic drones” (Ad Hoc) via her custom bass guitar and synthesizers.

An assistant to the late pioneering electronic composer and Deep Listening founder Pauline Oliveros, C. Lavender’s astute editing and the binaural recording process places the listener within the heady fluctuating underworld she has created on this album. The recording environment of the geodesic dome allowed for sounds to transfer out beyond the confines of the walls as well as allowing outside sounds from the surrounding wilderness to permeate in like that of a mutating cell. The album suggests “headphone listening” for the full hypnotic experience Myth of Equilibrium presents to the listener.

C. Lavender is a 2020 Pioneer Works (New York) Music Artist-in-Residence.

Following 2018's acclaimed collaboration with Simon Fisher Turner, "Care", Swedish sound artist Klara Lewis returns with "Ingrid", her third solo release for Editions Mego.

"Ingrid" is a departure from Lewis's previous solo outings, drifting from the eerie rhythmic variations of "Too" and "Ett" and moving assuredly into long-form experimentation. The piece retains those records' pulsing core and builds on a single cello loop that is steadily enveloped by a surge of distortion. It's almost like a voice or chant, shifting pointedly from a whisper into a scream before singing peacefully into the light.

At times, "Ingrid" reminds of William Basinski's looping melancholy or Steve Reich's controlled and innovative phase experiments, while at others, it recalls the chaotic Scandinavian physicality of black metal. Yet the entire composition is anchored in Klara Lewis's distinct emotional world. By dissolving familiar and beautiful strings in baths of noise, Lewis allows something violent but tender to grow in its place. In a society struck through by cynicism, "Ingrid" is a cathartic listening experience and a beacon of hope.

Finlay Shakespeare is a freak. As a one man band it often strikes the listener as bewildering that he can do all this; the programming sits firmly in the realms of genius, the constant punch of melody upon melody leaves a pleasant sting of surprise and as a lyric writer there’s a part of his moniker that seems apt. Solemnities is more gritty than his previous outings as a more raucous industrial edge is grafted on to his epic electronic pop leanings.

Ferrum is a large-scale exploration of inharmonic timbres, oscillating between brutal grinding textures and intricate percussive singularities, created by digitally transforming recordings of various metallic objects.

Susanne Kirchmayr's new album takes a close personal look at the spectral richness of iron and other metals, in various shapes and sizes, recorded, processed and arranged to a carefully curated selection of musical miniatures. Some of the results are an obvious nod to her Electric Indigo DJ alias, music that could be played on the dance floor of an alien cargo ship, both highly familiar and foreign at the same time. Others offer almost steady-state like meditative qualities, vibrations from deep within, on a sub atomic level, full of light and motion on the tiniest possible scale. The limitation in material opens up a seemingly unlimited world of colours and rhythms, oscillating, resonating and highly immersive.

Editions Mego releases the new album by Australian producer Jasmine Guffond. Developed over a two year period, Microphone Permission is an unsettling musical journey utilising contemporary tools of communication to display Guffond’s ongoing research into online surveillance and sound as a method of investigation.

Source material on Microphone Permission are from various projects Guffond has been working on; a commission to sonify the data of the city of Melbourne, a dance performance about the future sounds of an extinct forest, an installation that sonifies Twitter meta data in real time, a job as a composer for a theatre work about music and feminism by five young female identifying performers in Western Sydney and a site specific installation at the Linachtalsperre dam that employed the harmonic frequencies of electric currents.

The results are a stark, brooding, disorientating journey into a paranoid musical field that sits somewhere between ambient club music and a dystopian soundtrack. Elements of techno, classical music and sound art form a dark intriguing masterwork that questions the nature of invasive, algorithmic and computational listening practices.

For example Microphone Permission refers to the consent we routinely give when installing various apps. onto our smart devices. Inspired by a 2018 scandal in which fans of Spain’s most popular soccer team were effectively turned into unwitting spies by granting the La Liga application microphone permission. No matter which make or model, all smart devices are built with a microphone that is by default, forever listening. Listening in these situations often takes on an algorithmic form that enables tech developers to bypass public response to what is intuitively considered invasive practice, that is, traditional modes of eavesdropping such as using the microphone to listen and record audio.

Molocular Meditation is a bespoke light and sound environment featuring the voice of the Fall’s Mark E Smith. Smith is heard making observations on mundane objects, events and a range of meditation techniques basically associating his discontent with an apolitical british upper class. His voice forms the narrative component of an electroacoustic composition by Jan St. Werner placed in a hyper-real scenario evoking a state of transformation and deceleration. Molecular Meditation premiered at Cornerhouse, Manchester in 2014. This album presents a re-edited stereo version of the original multi-channel installation. Voice and guitar feedbacks were recorded by Werner and Smith at Blueprint Studios Manchester, electronics in Werner’s Studio in Berlin.

The B-side consists of unreleased new work partly written around the same time as Molocular Meditation in context of Werner's Fiepblatter Catalogue on Thrill Jockey. Back to Animals is a non-metric rhythm exercise frantically hybridizing percussive accents with synthesized pulse. On the Infinite of Universe and Worlds is the layout for an electronic opera on Giordano Bruno’s Renaissance writings which Werner was asked to conceptionalize for Finish festival Musica Nova. VS Canceled finds Mark E. Smith reading an email from Domino Records explaining their discontinuation of Von Südenfed, a band Mark E. Smith had founded with Mouse on Mars' Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma in 2006. Their debut album Tromatic Reflexxions came out on Domino in 2007.

Heather Leigh takes her Throne as queen of pedal steel with a suite of heartbleed ballads cauterised with burning riffs. After the rawness of its precursor I Abused Animal, Throne is a record of late night Americana and heavy femininity; intimate love songs smoked in sensuality. The songs on Throne are woozy, gorgeous and uncomfortable, smothered in thick layers of bass but lifted by multitracked vocals. These are rich song forms that stand in contrast to the stripped down steel in her duo with Peter Brotzmann.

Jung an Tagen is practicing sonic animism on a molecular level. With 'Agent im Objekt' he confronts us once more with a form of highly abstracted electronic music - puristic clubsounds for an accelerated future.
Kicking off with an accumulation of high-pitched, psychoactive sounds, 'Agent im Objekt' takes us into a hyperreal sphere reigned by sonic entities. Playing with swarm-dynamics and singular signals, moments of distance and proximity and noise textures that stimulate our perception, Jung An Tagen transgresses the common syntax of clubmusic. His strategies resemble computer music composition and focus on timbre, texture and structure in an almost analytical way. The sounds filtered from his synthesizer are polished and bright, but behave in an astonishingly organic way, forming propulsive melodic sketches. Arranged in multiple layers of versatile polyrhythms, the tracks are nurtured by the forceful dialectics of precisely arranged chaos and ecstatic order.
With his titles, Jung An Tagen is further adding an enigmatic narrative to his tracks, transcending the actual sphere of the dancefloor towards fictional storytelling. Following the structure of a one-sided chatlog, they evoke associations from the X-file series or mystery novels, revealing a brainteaser that is drawn from mysterious coordinates and secret codes.
In addition the official video "20:03 [Y] HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?" underlines Jung An Tagen's interdisciplinary interest in synaesthetic processes. Developed in collaboration with the programmers JeongHo Park and Scott Sinclair the video visualizes particle explosion data from CERN - the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Inspired by Peter Kubelkas 'Arnulf Rainer', the resulting geometric figures are exposed to a 'complimentary stroboscope' that glitches your receptors and stimulate your brainwaves with photo- and EEG-stimulation close to seizure, inducing a hallucinative reality.
'Agent im Objekt' is playful but analytical, uplifting but mentally disturbed. While the dynamic use of reoccuring motives forces your body to move, cerebral timbres provoke a series of stimuli to massage your brain. It is intellectual body music that might mark a poetic turn in progressive dance music.

Recorded in a remote English rural setting over a period of 24 hours this is an apt location for a recording that eschews time & space in favour of methodological displacement & deep psychological navigation. Modern Methods For Ancient Rituals is an experiment in acoustic & synthetic symbiosis which is deeply influenced by the atmosphere & acoustics of the rural location of Cats Abbey resulting in a set of recordings which can aid to the transformation of consciousness. Child & Bean conjure an audio experience which encapsulates elements of drone, trance, pulse, rhythm and melody subtly shifting all into a psychologically penetrating experience beyond the aesthetic and into the comforting unknown.

First outing for this collaborative effort from the prolific Posh Isolation mainstay Loke Rahbek and Frederik Valentin of KYO, also on the revered Danish label. As old friends circling around the same scene this is the first time they have combined their respective perspectives. The results are an ambitious aquatic infused audio environment. Recorded near water at Valentin’s studio within the vicinity of the new aquarium in Copenhagen, Buy Corals Online channels the sensual floating aspects of such environments.

UUUU is a new outfit featuring Edvard Graham Lewis, Thighpaulsandra, Matthew Simms and Valentina Magaletti. Individually these humans have implanted feathers in caps such as Coil, Dome, Wire, Tomaga, etc. Collectively they form UUUU, a powerhouse construction of fierce and free sonic exploration, as liberating as it is frightening, resulting in the richly rewarding. It's Going All Over The Floor presents itself as a terse meeting between dance, ambient, abstraction and improvisation. UUUU is a schizophrenic seething/soothing masterpiece of a past/present hybrid equally at home in the club, the home and the mind.

Editions Mego is pleased to welcome Danish Loke Rahbek (Damien Dubrovnik,Croatian Amorand Posh Isolation) to the fold. Known for countless creative and commercial endeavours Loke presents his first solo full length under his own name. As with all of Loke's output City of Woman harnesses the radical with the aesthetic in a manner of extreme pleasure for all who encounter.
Harnessing his thorough knowledge and experience in extreme electronics, melodic encounters and sultry showmanship Loke ties together disparate threads of various underground movements to create a singular and deeply personal journey through industrial temptation, noise refraction and melodic seduction.
This is 21st Century pop music. One which dismantles previous held borders of sound to present a wide palate of sound, song, abstraction and intense emotion.

After last year's releases on Spectrum Spools, Italian techno masterminds Donato Dozzy and Neel are returning as the duo Voices From The Lake with a release on the mother label Editions Mego: »Live @ MAXXI« is a marvellous organic live-set of hypnotic ambient techno, proofing the outstanding and elegant craftsmanship of their sonic sculpturing, that they both are famous for.

20th year anniversary reissue of the two milestone releases that kickstarted the entire Mego / Editions Mego imprint and initial aesthetic. This deluxe reissue brings together the first MEGO release, ‘Fridge Trax’ and the full length album that followed ‘Live and final Fridge’, originally released on Source in 1995.

The last time Fennesz released an album on Austrian label Mego it was 2001 and the name of that release was 'Endless Summer'. Now, in 2014 Editions Mego is extremely proud to release the conceptual follow up that landmark of abstract pop. Bécs (pronounced 'baeetch') is Hungarian for Vienna and is the first full length Fennesz solo release since 2008's 'Black Sea'.
Eschewing the more drone orientated works of 'Black Sea', 'Bécs' returns to the more florid pop mechanisms as deployed on Endless Summer. 'Static Kings' features the extra leverage of Werner Dafeldecker and Martin Brandlmayer who deploy a range of atmospheric abstract effects to shape a bewitching sound world. The 10 minute centrepiece 'Liminality' (featuring Tony Buck on drums) is classic Fennesz: epic, evocative, beautiful, impossible. 'Pallas Athene' creates a sanctuary of hovering beauty which leads into the title track. Emotional and assured, the track Bécs' is an astonishing contribution to contemporary pop. 'Sav' co-written by Cédric Stevens aka Acid Kirk) inhabits a less structural terrain as one enters a forest of small sounds and oblique atmospheres, where the closing 'Paroles', a gentle melody unravels amongst swirls of electronics and fried disruption. Bécs is not just an album or a series of songs, it's a world to inhabit, a landscape ripe with sounds, songs and that esteemed Fennesz signature. A singular work by a singular artist.

Npvr is the avant garde duo made up of the late Peter Rehberg and Nik Void. Editions Mego is proud to present their second and final release. No this is not some kind of Beatles synthetic AI that raises the dead reconstructed recordings but rather a new album made by the humans and their machines.

The initial meeting of Rehberg and Void was in London in 2016 and despite or due to their mutual awkwardness found solace and compatibility in the fact that they both had a similar electronic modular set up, along with matching cases to transport all. The idea to collaborate was an obvious and organic process as a means to connect their individual gear together and observe the outcome. The fruits of these initial experiments, recorded in London, resulted in the playful experimentation of their acclaimed 2017 release 33 33 (eMego 251).

Now in 2024 Editions Mego presents the logically titled follow up, 33 34. These sessions were recorded six months after the initial recordings at Peter’s home in Vienna. This was planned out as a mirror city release to the original London recordings. With Peter having access to his full studio set up this time around we encounter a rich audio landscape which organically folds together a variety of musical genres blurring any distinction between these forms so the resulting music hovers as a new cloud of sound. Any musical form, be it industrial, electro-acoustic, ambient, drone and techno all coexist and melt into the other as the ensuing result unveils a hypnotic swarm of divergent sounds (music). When active there were no lines or contexts with Npvr, either between sound or genre within these recordings or live where Npvr were at home playing at a techno club one night and an avant garde venue the next.