Peter Rehberg, the British-Austrian founder of the influential Editions Mego label, died of a heart attack, reports The Guardian. Rehberg’s collaborator François Bonnet, who records Jaeger as Kassel, and Bonnet’s label Ina-GRM shared the news. As a standalone artist, Rehberg has released a number of noise and ambient-oriented albums over the course of his 25-year career, including collaborations with Jim O’Rourke, Christian Fennesz and Stephen O’Malley from Sunn O))). Peter Rehberg was 53 years old.
Born and raised in England before moving to his father’s homeland in Austria, Rehberg released his debut album as Pita, Seven Tons for Free in 1996. The year before he had released the debut single on the Austrian label Mego, in which he would later take on a leading role. The label hosted several major underground composers such as Fennesz and Florian Hecker before it closed in 2005.
In the following year Rehberg founded the label as Editions Mego, today a respected institution for electronic music. Oneohtrix Point Never, Emeralds, Caterina Barbieri, Mark Fell, Oren Ambarchi and Bill Orcutt have all released records on the Imprint, which has also spawned sub-labels such as Spectrum Spools, Sensate Focus and Stephen O’Malley’s Ideologic Organ. Editions Mego continued to publish Rehberg’s own works, including his projects KTL (with Stephen O’Malley) and Fenn O’Berg (with Jim O’Rourke and Christian Fennesz).
In 2012 Rehberg began to work with François Bonnet on the archive project Recollection GRM, which reissued the work of the electronic music collective Groupe de Recherches Musicales from the 1950s. Bonnet wrote on Instagram: “I am heartbroken. Peter is suddenly gone. Just as. He hated goodbyes, effusions. Out of reserve. Out of sensitivity. He was one of the kindest, most loyal, and reliable people I have ever met. I feel privileged to have known him, worked with him and been his friend. I owe him so much. That’s how it is for many of us. “
