mego likes to see itself as a platform for all kinds of information and communication carried via modern electronic media, whether it be a compact disc, MiniDisc, DVD, Internet, video, live PA or a vinyl record release. This is why extreme effort is put into packaging and artwork, as well as a glorious dis regard for being pigeonholed into any one genre. It is our aim that mego releases and ideas should be collected and experienced for many years to come and not be seen as some fodder for hopeless fashion victimized disc jockeys.

mego opened its own Internet mail order shop called M.DOS in 1997. This features not only mego releases but other labels worthy of investigation, and has become an online meeting place for the global electronic community.

Unlike most electronic based labels, mego does make the effort to leave the cozy confines of the studio and play out live. With numerous performances (either as individual acts or as a full mego "all nighter") in Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Berlin (Interference), Karlsruhe (ZKM), Paris, Zurich, Barcelona (Sonar), London (LMC), Holland Festival 98, Stockholm, Lisbon, Rome, Milan, New York, LA, Chicago, Tokyo (ICC), as well as many outings in Vienna (Phonotaktik95+99, Hyperstrings, Word up, Wien Modern, etc..) and throughout Austria (Ars Electronica 97+99, Konfrontationen 98, Musikproto koll 98).

(c) mego



Hotel Paral.lel, Fennesz' full-length debut, is a puzzling listen. Combining meticulously detailed studio abuse with sparse rhythms, sweeping drones, some beautifully crafted guitar textures, and random discharges of digital noise, the album straddles a range of conceptual territories simultaneously. While not as immediately engaging as "Instrument"-Paral.lel lacks the warmth of its predecessor and is a bit more thematically non committal-it's also measurably more ambitious. In a sense that seems to be the unifying theme of the mego catalog, Hotel Paral.lel appears to go nowhere and everywhere at once, careening off in a dozen different directions with each track, but never moving beyond a certain base of musical accessibility made significantly more ponderous by the fact that the music is relentlessly abstract and devilishly subtle. A recent e-mail exchange offered the following observation by the artist: "Hotel Paral.lel is different from 'Instrument'-listen to it several times. Best, Christian." Among the highest recommendations I could offer for this disc is that I've had absolutely no difficulty in doing precisely that. Rating: 8
(sean cooper)

"Peter Rehberg a.k.a. Pita's first album, Seven Tons For Free was a monumental piece which was decisive in the direction that mego took as a label thereafter. Devoid of any element of ornamentation, the album featured endless repetitions of high frequency digital noises. Quite unlike 'minimal techno', all the sounds in this piece were reduced to pulse signals, distorted to unheard of extremes. These sounds could have been seen as the ruins, or maybe the corpse of techno. Along with albums such as Panasonic's "Vakio" and Ryoji Ikeda's "+/-", this album came to be known as a manifesto-like masterpiece."
(Atsushi Sasaki)