pita

Mesmer

Another indispensable limited edition (250 copies) from the wonderful Tapeworm cassette label, this time reissuing a long out-of-print composition by Editions Mego boss Peter Rehberg. 'Mesmer' was in fact Rehberg's very first solo work, commissioned by Ash International as part of their Mesmervariations double CD, released in 1995. This themed compilation included pieces by fellow sonic experimenters such as Gescom, Ryoji Ikeda, Robert Hampson and CM Von Hausswolff, all inspired by the work of 19th century "animal magnetist and hypnotist" Friedrich Mesmer. The first side of the cassette features the original nineteen-minute composition, while the B-side is a slightly longer, alternate rendering, culled from Rehberg's own dubplate, which he had cut for DJ use back in 1996. Far from the auricle-scouring extremes that were to come from Rehberg and his Pita project, 'Mesmer' is a comparatively meditative digital drone piece. The narrative still bristles with noisy ruptures and flecks of glitchy distortion, but at its essence the track is a stream of undulating tones guided by a pervading sense of uncharacteristic sobriety and steadiness. Pita fans will no doubt be glad to hear that as drone-based records go, this is a million miles away from the sort of pastoral exercises you tend to encounter nowadays, and instead offers a kind of intelligent, hovering ambiguity that's neither especially menacing nor welcoming. Just as was found to be the case with the recent Kevin Drumm reissues on Perdition Plastics, 'Mesmer' still harbours plenty of intrigue despite its age, and there's something timelessly powerful about its technology-defying aesthetic as a wiry, disrupted mass of signals. The B-side manifests itself as a grubbier version in a more advanced state of erosion, which resonates nicely with the lo-fi analogue formatting and the archival nature of the release.