Born at the intersection of techno and experimental music in Vienna, Austria, and evolving far beyond any classification, Editions Mego is an independent record label that champions variety. Founded in 1994 by Peter Rehberg together with Ramon Bauer and Andi Pieper, initially under the name Mego, Peter restarted the label in 2005, now called Editions Mego, and developed it into the much acclaimed outfit for what is known today. Peter passed away in 2021 and his legacy shines brilliantly through his label’s monumentally vast catalogue, with the final releases he had planned due to be released throughout 2022.
The meetings of Peter Rehberg and fellow musicians and collaborators sowed the seeds of Mego. In those times in the early 1990s, Bauer and Pieper wanted to move away from the overshadowing presence of techno back then in hopes of something more experimental, a desire Rehberg shared:
“I used to work in a record store at the time and I remember a lot of the techno distributors would send in faxes of all the new records and the description of the record was always just one of five words. “Techno house,” “pumping tracks.” It was always a very minimised vocabulary of how to describe music. Everything in this little box.”
“One of the things I always wanted to do when we started this back in the mid-90s,” Rehberg once said, “was that it wouldn’t become a genre-based label.” Rehberg rejected genre altogether, opting to describe his work instead as a coexistence of noise and harmony, dissonance and resonance, intimidation and beauty. This view became the defining thread of Mego: fearless exploration, experimentation, and emotional expression from artists who refuse to be boxed in.
To coincide with our Label Spotlight we are offering a free Editions Mego compilation CD with all physical orders excluding merchandise (whilst stocks last) featuring tracks by Russell Haswell, Mark Fell, Fennesz and more exclusive to this release (eMEGO170, '20130511 De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea').