CD – 10 tracks
Track list:
1. Metro Zwei (5:58)
2. No. 2 (4:49)
3. Metro (5:42)
4. Supa (3:01)
5. Nix Fünf (5:26)
6. Supa Zwei 1-12 (3:52)
7. Nix Drei (6:39)
8. Fast Nix (5:55)
9. Supa Vier (3:28)
10. Aux (6:07)
Reviews:
Calmant (Lithuania):
What comes here are the reflections of modern technocratic society – when every human step is under control of “the rational technology”; on the contrary, REHBERG & BAUER are revising and inspecting the whole idea of a creative process – their very own vision of animated machine music has been structured. Despite of eloquent constructive grounds (sic), in the broad sense this is your beloved noise record. Very diverse and hardly foreknown, it borders upon minimalistic ambient loops – the greatest examples are Metro, Supa vier and Aux cuts. Drastically magnetising.
The Wire (UK):
Peter Rehberg & Ramon Bauer are better known – where they are known at all – through their work on the Viennese Mego label under the aliases Pita and General Magic. On Faßt they announce, “all original source sounds were obtained from broken DAT tapes, personal mistakes and total machine failure”, and that this is “a final cry for help from the derailed facsimile line”. Such sound sources can and do yield all types of material, and this is a much more textured, dirty, infested sound than that resulting from Oval’s similar tactics. Like Oval, however, Rehberg & Bauer take some pains to make explicit the rhythms implicit in their sources. There is a gorgeous array of digital glitching, the raw thrum of electricity, and the crackle of static, but noises are occasionally processed, cleaned up, until they resemble the drum machine sounds that they may well have started out as. Who can say? Perhaps these sounds were simply hewn from the distortion into which they tend to dissolve. Whatever, it would be a mistake to get caught up in the more musical elements and to ignore the raw beauty of the elemental, which is this disc’s true subject. [Tim Owen]
ennui (USA):
This project consists of looped noises and drones which are fairly well layered. Unfortunately there is not too much going on here, and it quickly becomes boring. Fans of subtly changing, minimal experimental music might want to look into this.
Resonance (UK):
Peter Rehberg (aka DJ Pita) uses twin CD decks and a Mac powerbook to make his music. One of the Mac programmes enables him to draw and loop the parameters of the effects that he uses to transform the already disembodied sounds from the CD player. Sometimes he will loop one frame of sound. For this project he has teamed up with Ramon bauer from general magic. Their music explores the digital imperfections of today’s supposedly perfect machines. Their textures sound like a virus has eaten away everything that was once recognisable. On ‘Nix Drei’ it is as if the insides of the sounds are being sucked out. Elsewhere they use regular rhythms. However these have more in common with a room full of computer operators saving their work onto hard-disk than with the machines of a bygone industrial age. The sound can be dense. ‘Metro Zwei’ starts off with a thick falling cloud of high static sounds which morph into a low bass rumble akin to burrowing in concrete. ‘Supra Zwei 1-12’ is sparse – the digital equivalent of the analogue clicks and pops you get on records. I love this CD. One of the most profound memories I have in the last two years, is of my visit to Potsdamer Platz in Berlin last september. The landscape of concrete, pipes, huge machines and mud was a combination of both wasteland and future possibilities. These sights troubled me but I had to get a closer look. In the same way I am drawn to the inner detail of the sound and texture of this recording. Fans of Microstoria/Oval and Panasonic will enjoy these two releases. There is no post-modern nostalgia here. This CD looks to the future. [Phil Durrant]
i/e (USA):
Of the many projects which Mego ministers PETER REHBERG and RAMON BAUER have fronted, Fasst could well be the strangest. Based on the premise that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, the duo rummaged through the bins and scavenged DAT scraps which were damaged, discarded, or simply forgotten. A little polish and quarts of glue later, and the resourceful musicians had cobbled together a symphony of errors. The end product is less of a Frankenstein job than one might have expected. If these pieces were indeed stitched together, the seams have been artfully confused with glitchy loops and squeaky hinges. Track three is a merry bleating-fuzztone blast which develops into a tremendously satisfying rhythmic romp ala (sic) Sakho and friends. The noises elsewhere are shrill enough to bore new ears in your skull – and sharp enough to put out your pineal gland. Snippets of static fill tracks six through seventeen. Rehberg and Bauer, who would never do something as patently obvious as have the track names correspond to track numbers, deliver a pair of highly abstract sound ‘sculptures’ (18, 19) and exit with a bracing ballet for nuts-and bolts, powder-sander, and plane (20). All recycled garbage should sound this good. [gg]