Editions Mego is an experimental electronic music independent record label founded in 1994 as Mego in Vienna, Austria. The label was renamed in 2006 as a new company, set up both to keep the Mego albums in print and to issue new albums, and was run by Peter Rehberg a.k.a. Pita. The label has released over 400 records in 30 years of activity.
Musical style
The Mego label (and its second iteration, Editions Mego) has stood out for its unpredictability, as it has not been tied to any particular musical style. It has released music by artists as diverse as Fennesz, Russell Haswell, Oneohtrix Point Never, Bill Orcutt, and the band Emeralds, in styles ranging "from electroacoustic music to metal, synthwave, drone, and ambient".
Among the albums that had a strong impact and launched the careers of musicians, journalist Tristan Bath mentions Endless Summer by Fennesz, Returnal by Oneohtrix Point Never, and Ecstatic Computation by Caterina Barbieri.
Impact and critical acclaim
Mego's efforts were awarded a distinction at the Ars Electronica 1999. In the jury's statement, Jim O'Rourke lauded the label's work as defining "a brand new punk computer music".
History
thumb|Performance by Mego artists (including Peter Rehberg) in 1997.
1994–2005: First phase as Mego
The Mego label was founded in 1994 by Ramon Bauer, Andreas Pieper, and Peter Meininger in Vienna. The label's name allegedly refers to the expression “My Eyes Glaze Over” coined by American futurologist and geostrategist Herman Kahn, or to a “hacker expression to indicate that you've spent too much time in front of the screen”.
2006: Launch of Editions Mego
In 2006, Peter Rehberg founded Editions Mego to continue Mego's exploratory work and keep the Mego back catalogue available. Both albums featured in Bleep website's top 10 albums of 2010.
Among the iconic albums released during Rehberg's final years of activity at Editions Mego, journalist Philip Sherburne cites Hubris (2016) by Oren Ambarchi, Ecstatic Computation (2019) by Caterina Barbieri, and Peel (2020) by Kenyan musician KMRU.