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Peter Rehberg

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Pita, “Get In” (Editions Mego, 2016)

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If history is any indication, it seems to be nearly impossible to simultaneously run a thriving record label and remain a vital and evolving artist: one side always has to suffer. That said, Peter Rehberg has somehow managed to fare better than just about anybody, as Editions Mego remains one of the best experimental music labels on the planet and his current work with Shampoo Boy is excellent. 

It has been a long time since Rehberg has released a significant solo album though and I was not all sure what to expect from Get In, as he was once at the absolute vanguard of electronic music and presumably always has the potential to be there again, but it does not seem like he has been swinging for the fences all that much lately. As it turns out, Get In is indeed in no danger of redefining music or unlocking bold new vistas of artistic expression, but the consolation prize is that it is one of Rehberg’s stronger and most consistent albums to date, showing that he is still every bit as capable of brilliance as ever. Sometimes being good is a lot better than being first.

The first Peter Rehberg album that I ever picked up was 1999’s Get Out, which came out right around the same period that I was also discovering Christian Fennesz. At the time, I mostly preferred Fennesz’s vision of laptop-fractured experimental guitar, but definitely loved Pita’s more visceral, noise-damaged aesthetic when he managed to balance out his digitized entropy with some melody. The reason that I bring that up is because it seems like absolutely no time has passed at all for Rehberg between Get Out and Get In: he is still doing almost exactly the same thing, but he has definitely gotten quite a bit better at it. 

Rehberg’s eternal commitment to the same vision that he had almost 20 years is kind of amazing, as he has since collaborated with many of the most distinctive and inventive guitarists in music (Fennesz, Jim O’Rourke, Steven O’Malley) and released an avalanche of adventurous work through Editions Mego in the ensuing years, yet none of that seems to have made a noticeable impact on his solo work. 

However, I suppose a strong counterpoint might be that Rehberg was able to work with so many singular and influential artists precisely because he is one of them himself and he intends to stay that way. Viewed in that light, Rehberg is not so much repeating himself as he is single-mindedly focused on perfecting his original vision whenever he finds the time to throw himself into it. He only indulges his more divergent impulses through his collaborations, I guess.

To my ears, he has already attained perfection at least twice previously with Get Out‘s “Untitled 3” and Fenn O’Berg’s “Fenn O’Berg Theme,” but one could argue that he had quite a bit of help in both cases (the former being ingeniously built upon an Ennio Morricone sample). On Get In, Rehberg does all the heavy lifting himself and scales comparable heights in at least two cases. The album’s clear centerpiece is the absolutely gorgeous “Line Angel,” as Rehberg weaves a lushly shimmering and rippling reverie, then artfully disrupts the idyll with dissonant and unexpected pitch shifts. 

The following “S200729” is similarly stunning, as the initially unpromising synthpop-meets-the-blues groove unexpectedly explodes into a gloriously gnarled storm of howling noise at the halfway point. The closing “MFBK” is also quite lovely, though it is a bit less distinctive than some of the other highlights, veering into warm, pastoral drone territory that is already well-covered by others. 

Rehberg does it quite well though, enhancing his blissful swells with a groaning undercurrent and some effective added texture and sizzle. The rest of the album is not necessarily weaker or less inspired, but the remainder of the pieces do tend to fall on the incidental or atmospheric ends of the spectrum, either providing bridges between the more substantial works or just offering a brief throbbing, brooding, or sizzling interlude to vary the mood and texture a bit.

As such, Get In‘s only truly substantial flaw is just that there is just not enough of it. A good rule of thumb here is that anything longer than five minutes is excellent and anything less than that is not quite a fully formed piece. There are not any notable exceptions to that at all. Since there are only seven songs here, it is safe to say that Get In is at the very least a half-great album and probably even Rehberg’s most consistently solid solo release to date. It may be unlikely to achieve the impact or influence of his earlier work, but that is only because everyone else eventually caught up: Rehberg is unquestionably still at the peak of his powers.

Listen here.

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Fenn O’Berg “Magic & Return” (Editions Mego, 2009)

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Editions Mego has finally reissued the woefully out-of-print complete recorded oeuvre of this massively influential and infrequently convening laptop supergroup. Unsurprisingly, it still sounds great.

Christian Fennesz, Jim O’Rourke, and Peter Rehberg made their unexpected group debut in 1997 at the Nickelsdorf Festival and embarked upon a rather weird and decidedly un-prolific trajectory before eventually going on hiatus in 2002 (they are planning to resurface for a new album in 2010). Despite only releasing two improvised live albums (not a single studio album) and playing in front of frequently indifferent or even hostile audiences that expected actual guitar-playing (Jim O’Rourke was even allegedly forced to play a short acoustic set at a show in Rome), this trio ultimately wound up defining the entire laptop improv genre. These two albums still sound fresh and inspired today and certainly hold their own with the best of each artist’s individual work (though arguments from Fennesz fans would not be entirely unwarranted).

The Magic Sound of Fenn O’Berg is comprised of highlights from the band’s extensive world tour in 1998-1999. It begins with the brilliantly demented “Shinjuku Baby Pt. 1,” which is a surrealist barrage of abstract electronic buzzing, squelching, cartoon sound effects, mangled pop music, warm synth washes, subterranean rumbles, and crackling static. Twisted electronic chaos remains the theme for the rest of the album, but the trio’s unique sensibilities complement each other quite well and humor, unpredictability, and sublime beauty all manage to uneasily coexist. 

In fact, the album sounds surprisingly composed and spacious for a series of live improvisations; it rarely (if ever) sounds like an accidental pile-up or a bunch of competing, independent themes. While it is generally inspired and enjoyable, however, the whole album is essentially a prelude to the lengthy and brilliant “Fenn O’Berg Theme,” which marries a slow-motion shuffling jazz beat to a melancholy orchestral loop and a hauntingly noirish pitch-shifted trumpet hook (or perhaps a French horn), then buries it all beneath an onslaught of textured electronic entropy. It is an absolutely staggering, must-hear track.   

The Return of Fenn O’Berg is culled from the band’s two 2002 performances (one of which was at a nearly empty jazz club in Vienna). The explosively dense opening track (“Floating My Boat”) makes it immediately clear that the group had progressed quite a bit from their earlier work. It begins with what sounds like mangled house music being showered with shattering glass or seashells, but then becomes enveloped in increasingly prevalent non-musical crackling and rumbling before shifting gears again into backwards strings, clattering free-jazz drumming, glitched-out ambience, and ultimately cinematic string swells accompanied by a thunderstorm.  

The similarly excellent piece that follows, “A Viennese Tragedy,” begins with stuttering abstract weirdness violently colliding with what sounds like a ‘70s soft rock sample. Much of what follows is somewhat deranged and random-seeming, but it is unpredictable enough to remain compelling until it finally coheres into a dreamlike, beautiful, and submerged-sounding classical music loop around the nine-minute mark. 

Of course, sustained beauty is not what these guys came here for, so the idyllic interlude is rapidly obliterated by cavernous, echoey squeals and metallic creaks, but it is amazing while it lasts (like Gavin Bryars’ The Sinking of the Titanic condensed into one glorious minute). The remaining two tracks, “Riding Again” and “We Will Defuse You,” are also quite good, but nothing on Return quite matches the prior album’s highlight of “Fenn O’Berg Theme.” Nevertheless, Return is the probably the more consistent and inspired of the two albums.

This reissue also includes two rare bonus tracks: “(5,6m Of) Fenn O’Berg” (which originally appeared on a 1999 compilation entitled Sonar 99) and “Adidas Sun Tanned Avant Man” (which was originally released only on the original Japanese edition of Return). While neither is particularly brilliant or essential, they do not sound at all extraneous and blend seamlessly with the surrounding material. Of course, the presence or absence of extra songs is rather irrelevant here: these albums contain some of the wildest and most lively electronic experimentation/improv of the last two decades and they are finally back in print. There is absolutely no need to throw added incentives into the mix.