Electronic music legend and head of Editions Mego, Peter Rehberg (RIP), teamed up with zeitkratzer mastermind Reinhold Friedl a few years ago. 3 side-long pieces melting electronic / contemporary avantgarde. Uncompromising.

When Peter »Pita« Rehberg and Reinhold Friedl first met each other, they did not like each other »at all,« as Friedl emphasises with a hearty laugh. The two would however eventually bond over the years thanks to a mutual respect for each other’s music. In the summer of 2021, they entered the studio together for the first time. Their joint album for Berlin’s Karlrecords is a faithful document —no editing, no overdubs—of their improvisations during two recording sessions shortly before Rehberg’s sudden and untimely passing on July 22nd of that year. The three pieces see Rehberg working with electronics and Friedl with his inside piano, proving that they had indeed managed to find a common ground—up to a point where it at times becomes hard to tell who plays what on this record.

Friedl ran into Rehberg in Zbigniew Karkowski’s tiny Tokyo apartment in 1999 while organising the first edition of the Off-ICMC that was set to take place in the following year. »I came uninvited and slept a night at Zbigeniew’s before Peter arrived and I had to move out,« remembers Friedl, who ended up inviting the Mego founder to perform at the Off-ICMC even though he found it hard to relate to his music. »We had very different backgrounds: he came from industrial and I had roots in classical music and improv, a high-brow prick!« After having met several times at different concerts without ever really speaking to each other in the following years, a concert in Vienna in the late 2010s marked a turning point in their relationship (or lack thereof). Playing their sets back to back and loving every second of what the other was doing, the two finally clicked on musical level. »We met for dinner on each of the three following nights!,« remembers Friedl.

The two would go on to become good friends, meeting regularly to discuss music and everything else while both were living in Vienna just a few minutes away from each other. Rehberg put out Friedl’s collaboration with Eryck Abecassis, »Animal Électrique« on his Editions Mego label in 2020 and eventually they entered the studio twice for sessions that were completely improvised with no prior preparation. »Caciara,« »Chiasso,« and »Clamore«—named retrospectively after three Italian words for »noise«—capture the spontaneity of two artists who had always been outliers in their respective fields finding a common ground in sprawling dynamics and sonic intensity as well as enabling each other to expand their individual sound palettes. »Peter gave me cover,« explains Friedl. »I had the feeling that I was able to do things I otherwise wouldn’t play.«

If there is one thing that united them, Friedl adds, it was listening, and throughout these roughly 64 minutes, you can indeed hear them listening closely to each other, giving each other space and reacting to what the other is doing. Even though they unfortunately never managed to get together for a planned third session, these recordings—carefully mixed by Dirk Dresselhaus, but otherwise virtually untouched—perfectly encapsulate the energy unleashed by two free spirits coming together over a shared love for pushing the envelope of improvised noise music, unlocking the sensory potentials of it. It is quite fitting that this veritable onslaught of noise would end in the most understated way: »The computer says stop,« quips Rehberg. »That’s enough!« The rest is laughter.