General Magic & Pita - Fridge Trax Plus (2015)

20th year anniversary reissue of the two milestone releases that kickstarted the entire Mego / Editions Mego imprint and initial aesthetic. This deluxe reissue brings together the first MEGO release, ‘Fridge Trax’ and the full length album that followed ‘Live and final Fridge’, originally released on Source in 1995.

Made by the founders of the initial Mego label, Peter Rehberg (Pita), alongside Andreas Pieper and Ramon Bauer (General Magic) these recordings are legendary in their execution. It was these pioneering releases, along with the earlier Warp and Sahko output, that really pushed abstraction squarely into the formally safe realm of dance music. The results were amongst the most influential musical offerings of the period and the paths laid out have been traversed by many a sonic explorer to this day.

Both the EP and full length were made via the same process whereby microphones were placed in a fridge in order to harvest the unusual microscopic sound world within. The resulting hums, buzzes, flickers and icy drones were then reassembled and reconstructed to make an assortment of tracks which range from rhythmic, ambient and glacial straight on through to the downright bizarre.

Fridge Trax is landmark release, a white good rearranged as awry ambience and freak funk. One which still resides fresh and aside from the pack 20 years on.