★Editions Mego
Hostile Environment
Bolder is Martin Maischein, who used to record as Heinrich At Hart on Position Chrome, and Peter Votava, also known as Pure, who has recorded previously for Mego and was half of Ilsa Gold. With their combined background in electronic music of all kinds, Bolder introduces a significant proposition to the current experimental electronic boom. Blurring the lines between industrial, techno, dub, ambient, and narrative forms, the work on Bolder's debut presents a dance amongst the abyss, a world wher…
Goda Nott
Last winter we got snowed in, luckily we were at the studio, so with no food or drinks, we had to take our minds of the fact that we´ll have to spend the time locked in until the snow melted, so we decided to work on new recordings influenced by the situation. The snow is all up over the window, It might be even up over the top of the house, and from time to time we had the feeling that we may have been asleep for a week, for all we know.. We couldn't even tell what day it was, or whethe…
Through A Pre-Memory
CD edition: Pan Sonic space explorer Mika Vainio and Sunn 0))) strongarm Stephen O'Malley rock our world to the foundations with this anticipated union of electronics and guitars recorded as ÄÄNIPÄÄ, featuring vocals by Alan Dubin (Khanate) and string arrangements from Eyvind Kang. In gestation for some years now, the results are little short of a modern doom masterpiece; a bracing exposition of cold, condensed, rage and stoic passion delivered like a slow, internally bruising hate-f**k t…
Journey from Anywhere
Compound Eye is Drew McDowall (formerly of Coil) and Tres Warren (Psychic Ills and Messages). Journey from Anywhere is their second album release following Origin of Silence, an art edition LP on The Spring Press label. This double LP features four sides of improvised electronics that lead the listener into the dark recesses of the duo's subterranean explorations. Each of these works move at a slow and considered pace, gradually unfolding into a transportative blur of dark psychedelic minim…
Red Man K's Bedrifter
In 2001, Peter Rehberg (then of Mego) asked Parl Kristian Bjørn Vester aka Goodiepal if he would be interested in doing something for the label. Despite meeting on numerous occasions at various events and happenings around Europe, nothing was delivered. One hot August day in 2013, a large package arrived containing lacquers for a double vinyl LP. Here it was: the Goodiepal Mego album delivered as lacquers and not a WeTransfer link. The lacquers were sent to plant and made into test-p…
Convulsive Threshold
Two heavyweight explorers of sound and technology, Russell Haswell and Yasunao Tone, both undertaking separate rigorous experiments into the synthesis of sound and all its remits, converge for one helluva collaborative work. ‘Convulsive Threshold’ is the result of years of research and experimentation, Haswell’s systems of hybrid analogue/digital audio generation acting as one of the starting points for this relentess piece of material, which are then subjected to Tone’s MP3 Deviation tec…
Gridshifter
Stefan Nemeth: synthesizers. Steven Hess: drums (on B-Side). Bernhard Breuer: drums (on 'Dedispersion I & II'). Innode enters the world with an audacious debut of rhythm and sound, space and silence and an astonishing blend of the acoustic and the electronic. Spearheaded by Stefan Németh (cofounder of Radian, Lokai) in close collaboration with Steven Hess (Locrian, Pan American, Cleared) and Bernhard Breuer (Elektro Guzzi, Tumido), Gridshifter is an intense, astonishing sonic experience which na…
You'll Be Safe Forever remixes
Limited 12' with remixes of material from latest Locust album by Ulrich Schnauss, COH, Nicholas Bullen. One of the more unusual Editions Mego releases of recent times comes via a set of Locust remixes provided by unlikely bedfellows Ulrich Schnauss, Coh and Nicholas Bullen. Schnauss opens the set with one of the more gently blissful tracks in the Emego catalogue, making use of the original vocal and swathing it in layers shimmering ambience, without the euphoric peaks that have typified som…
Retro-2038
COH is the moniker used by Ivan Pavlov from Russia for more than a decade. COH is also the Russian word for 'sleep'. Yet, do not be deceived - RETRO-2038 is much more of a deep space than a deep sleep. The second COH release on Editions Mego is a true delight to behold, inviting as it does its exploration of electronic sound in minimalism, futuristic pop and the uncharted territories inbetween. Ranging from digital updates of Giorgio Moroder's pulse experiments to menacing lingering LF to…
A Life Is Everywhere
'A Life Is Everywhere' is an ecstatic mix of rhythm, noise, drone, texture and melody. Simultaneously heartfelt and not for the faint hearted. Within their self contained world Cindytalk continue the unique trajectory that has purveyed their career starting in 1982. This instalment further explores the fearsome terrain that was initiated with previous Editions Mego releases such as 'The Crackle of my Soul' and 'Hold Everything Dear'. Throughout the 6 tracks on offer the standard fair of m…
Marriage of Metals
In its history throughout millennia it is fair to say the Gamelan has never had an encounter quite like this. Marriage of Metals is a devastating extension of the harmonic properties found in the instruments of Indonesia. Daniel Menche was granted access to a remarkable Gamelan studio where he was given full privilege to record any and all of these rare and ancient gongs -- most notably, the gigantic "Gong Ageng," that contains the deepest of deep acoustic bass. Menche took the raw source mat…
Trainwrekz
Ensemble Skalectrik is a side-project of Nick "Ekoplekz" Edwards. Previous emissions include the self-released psycho-geographical abstraction of Snuff Mill Tapes and a homage to Maurizio Bianchi via Feral Tapes. Focusing entirely on spontaneous composition and one-take improvisation, Ensemble Skalectrik represents the most raw, extreme performance-based electronic music in Edwards' repertoire. On Trainwrekz, Edwards has dusted-off his turntables, grabbed a stack of old vinyl (mainly sound e…
Four Years Older
A new set by the coolest chap in New York City, documenting the development process of a solo electric guitar piece that Alan Licht has been playing out for the last four years. Revered for his work in the Blue Humans and Text Of Light, and a key figure in the pantheon of experimental solo guitar players born in the late '60s such Jim O'Rourke and Oren Ambarchi, Four Years Older is his debut Editions Mego release, representing another peak in a career of mining the rich seams of minimalism, noi…
Proper Headshrinker
Ever since Stephen Sharp and Roc Jiménez de Cisneros embarked on the deconstructive process they refer to as "Rave Synthesis," the goal was to come up with odd relatives of well-established sounds in techno culture by constantly messing with the original recipes, expanding the tropes, and hinting at novel paths for contemporary psychedelia. Almost three years after the influential Rave Slime, Evol's fifth album takes the idea one step further. The content of Proper Headshrinker was first pre…
The Wires Cracked
The recordings for The Wires Cracked were completed in a frenzied two week period in October of 2012. I had mentioned in discussing a previous album's construction that I prefer to forget how I build any particular electro-acoustic amalgam. This is so that I don't get to precious with them, so that I could refine them further, so that the sounds themselves speak beyond their aggregate parts. With the album being relatively fresh in my mind, I can still recall various components to "The Wi…
You'll Be Safe Forever
CD version. You'll Be Safe Forever marks the first release from Locust in 12 years. Mark Van Hoen, who made a string of influential releases as Locust on R&S records in the 1990s, all but retired the alias at the end of that decade. In May 2012, Van Hoen was invited to perform a live set on WFMU radio. In order to make the set more spontaneous and add a further dimension, he asked friend and fellow musician Louis Sherman to collaborate. While improvising new material in Sherman's Brooklyn …
Parallel / Grayscale
Parallel/Grayscale is the first collaborative work between Italian guitarist and composer Giuseppe Ielasi and French-Swiss composer and electroacoustic musician Kassel Jaeger. It is comprised of two different improvisation sessions. The first one took place in Paris, in October of 2011. The second happened in Oreno, in June of 2012, after the first concert Ielasi and Jaeger performed together. The first session was a pure analog device improvisation, whereas the second one was more laptop-o…
Ablation
Welcome return for Robert Hampson with the first Main album in seven years, new on eMego. Hampson founded Main with Scott Dawson upon disbanding Loop in '94, and while their initial releases still bore traces of their space-rock origins, the goal was always total ecstatic abstraction, and by the time of the Hz series, completed in '96, they'd pretty much achieved it. Main's music has been called many things: industrial, noise, isolationist electronica, dub, drone; the truth it, it's all a…
Chimerization (German)
**German Edition** Florian Hecker's text-sound piece 'Chimerization' explores the intersection of language and psychoacoustics. Using an "experimental libretto", 'The Snake, the Goat and the Ladder (A board game for playing chimera)' written by Iranian writer and philosopher Reza Negarestani, recited by speakers in Farsi, English, and German, and recorded in anechoic chambers - rooms with practically no sound reflection - Hecker challenges our perception of the speaker's voice through its decomp…
Real Colors of the Physical World
Real Colors of the Physical World is a title whose parameters of reference may at first seem obvious, but a moment's consideration renders it strange. The physical world, as opposed to the phenomenal, is, as we are able to suppose through the insights of science, an invisible place, if it is even enough to count as a place. What, then, are the qualities being named here? By way of an answer, it is worth recalling that musique concrète has not only an historical but a conceptual priority o…