I haven’t heard a General Magic record since their 1997 Frantz! album and 2000’s Rechenkönig…both were on the Mego label and this duo of Andreas Pieper and Ramon Bauer were regarded as excellent exponents of the “glitch” thing that was sweeping Europe at the time, a genre noted for its fresh new approach to generating noise and music with laptop computers and making a virtue out of exploiting the artefacts inherent in digital audio files. I also keep overlooking that both Bauer and Pieper were co-founders (with Peter Meininger) of the Mego label, moving into the role from their background with the techno label Mainframe in Vienna.
With the release of Nein Aber Ja (GOTO RECORDS GOTO004) it’s confirmed the duo have been in “hibernation” for most of the last twenty years, but they surfaced in 2022 with releases such as Softbop, Livebop and GMTF Sessions 1-4 (none of which crossed our desk at the time), and reformed an alliance with Tina Frank, the visual side of the Mego operation. This new one is a doozy – a sizzling platter of tiny explosions, with the two creators evidently taking great pleasure in unleashing near-chaos, pulling the rug out from under your back, tearing down buildings and re-assembling them as heavy goods vehicles…I’m re-experiencing a lot of the fun and excitement of new discoveries that Mego used to supply on a regular basis in those heady days of 1999-2000. Impolite, grainy digital noises as thick as sandy beach towels, rubbing paws with aggressive power-beats and – in places – the addition of snarly rapped vocals that make General Magic strong contenders to win at the next annual DAF-impersonators competition to be held in Leipzig (Depeche Mode keep on applying for this event, but they don’t even qualify).
I don’t know if there ever was a “Vienna School” or “Vienna Sound” for this kind of electronic-digital music, but here’s something that marks out its boundaries as something highly distinct from much current laptop-diddling or mixing-desk japery, informed by a strong sense of direction and purpose, and steering a course that avoids lukewarm or over-familiar sounds in favour of snappy, hostile, crocodile bites. (08/12/2023)