Austrian independent electronic-music label based in Vienna; the original Mego imprint founded 1994 by Ramon Bauer, Peter Meininger and Andreas Pieper (Peter Rehberg joining shortly after); the imprint operated continuously across the 1994–2005 period as the Vienna laptop-electronic pole within the F·19 glitch / microsound / post-digital tradition; closed 2005; relaunched as Editions Mego in 2006 under Rehberg's sole direction; the second incarnation continued the editorial direction across the 2006–2021 period until Rehberg's death on 22 July 2021; the catalogue continues under the management of the imprint's post-Rehberg editorial team alongside the Recollection GRM partnership, Spectrum Spools, Old News and Sensate Focus sub-imprints; filed at Tier I as the central Continental F·19 network across both incarnations.
Editions Mego is the central Continental network for the F·19 (glitch / microsound / post-digital) tradition. The original Mego imprint opened in 1994 in Vienna with the founder generation of Ramon Bauer, Peter Meininger and Andreas Pieper; Peter Rehberg (b. 1968 London, raised Vienna, d. 22 July 2021 Vienna; performing as Pita) joined shortly after and became the imprint's editorial centre across both incarnations. The Vienna laptop-electronic pole the imprint anchored sat as one of three Continental F·19 poles during the form's 1990s consolidation period: the Vienna pole (Mego), the Helsinki-Turku pole (Sähkö / Pan Sonic from 1993), and the Chemnitz pole (Raster-Noton, formally merged 1999). The Vienna pole's editorial direction was the most narrative and least clinical of the three; the catalogue's mode extended from the early-period laptop-noise position (Bauer / Pieper / General Magic) through to the surrounding contemporary electronic-music field that Fennesz's Endless Summer (MEGO 035, 2001) drew sustained critical attention to.
The original Mego catalogue ran from 1994 through to 2005 across about MEGO 080 catalogue entries. The opening period documented the Vienna laptop-electronic method's consolidation through General Magic's Frantz (MEGO 003, 1995), Bauer / Pieper's collaborative 7 Tons of Stone (MEGO 011, 1996) and the founder-generation catalogue; the late-1990s and early-2000s period extended the catalogue through Pita's solo work (Rehberg's Get Out, MEGO 038, 1999, became the period's defining Vienna laptop-noise statement), the Farmers Manual collective recordings, the Hecker catalogue, and the Fennesz catalogue's commercial and critical breakthrough with Endless Summer in 2001 (the album's melodic-laptop resolution of the F·19 method opened the form to audiences far beyond the laptop underground and remains the catalogue's most commercially significant single release). The original imprint closed in 2005 following internal organisational disagreements among the founder generation; the closure was contained rather than acrimonious, and the catalogue's rights passed to Rehberg for the later 2006 relaunch.
Editions Mego from 2006 onward extended the editorial direction across Rehberg's sole curatorial direction for 15 years. The opening Editions Mego gesture (Pita's Live Salvage 1997–2000, eMEGO 080 numbering picking up from the original Mego catalogue close, 2006) re-established continuity with the original imprint and opened the second incarnation's catalogue. The later Editions Mego catalogue extended across the surrounding contemporary experimental electronic field: KTL (the Rehberg / Stephen O'Malley duo) released across the late 2000s and 2010s with impact within the contemporary experimental-and-drone-metal cross-traffic; Cindytalk's Gordon Sharp returned to active catalogue work through Up Here in the Clouds (eMEGO 099, 2009) and later releases; Mark Fell, Florian Hecker, Tim Hecker, Bill Orcutt, Lasse Marhaug and the 2010s-2020s roster extended the catalogue considerably.
The sub-imprint structure is one of the post-2006 catalogue's clearest editorial achievements. Recollection GRM (the partnership with INA-GRM Paris, opened 2012) handles the academic electroacoustic reissue programme that has brought portions of the 1960s-1980s GRM catalogue back into circulation; the partnership constitutes the catalogue's most editorially cross-label collaboration. Spectrum Spools (run by John Elliott of Emeralds, opened 2011) handles the US synthesist focus and operates as a parallel imprint for the contemporary American kosmische-and-synthesizer tradition; Old News handles the contemporary experimental-and-rock cross-traffic; Sensate Focus (Mark Fell's techno-leaning project-imprint) handles the catalogue's rhythmic-electronic adjacency.
Peter Rehberg's death on 22 July 2021 in Vienna constituted the catalogue's most significant editorial discontinuity. Rehberg had been the imprint's editorial centre across both incarnations (joining the Mego founder generation shortly after the 1994 opening; sole editor of Editions Mego from 2006 onward); his catalogue across the period as Pita and within KTL was one of the contemporary Continental experimental-electronic tradition's most central artistic positions. The catalogue continues under the post-Rehberg editorial team into the contemporary period, with the Recollection GRM partnership and the sub-imprint structure continuing operation; the Editions Mego catalogue is one of the period's clearest sustained editorial programmes across about 32 years (Mego 1994–2005 plus Editions Mego 2006 onward).
The Bureau treats Editions Mego as a Tier I imprint on the strength of the F·19 form-defining position, the 32-year sustained editorial direction (under Rehberg's direction across both incarnations and into the contemporary post-Rehberg continuation), and the sub-imprint structure's editorial breadth. The catalogue's editorial centre sits outside the industrial-and-noise tradition the archive otherwise documents (Editions Mego is filed as the central F·19 imprint, where the imprint's laptop-electronic-and-glitch vein is form-distinct from the industrial-and-noise tradition); the file's editorial function is to anchor the F·19 form structure rather than to claim Mego as an industriv-central catalogue.