These 2 heavyweights of experimental music have been associates for 2 decades. Their creative collaboration came about after a meeting in 2004, which led to a monthly file exchange program in 2005. Instead of releasing results immediately it was decided to test the material in a live setting. Performances were held in Vienna and throughout the UK during 2006.
CD ‘Colchester’ (Editions Mego, 2008) is the final result of this process. A mesmerising and intense collision of Z’EV’s acoustic percussion work and PITA’s computer manipulation.
Peter Rehberg (a.k.a. Pita) (1968, London), laptop player and the founder of the MEGO label in Vienna. He still runs it under the new name Editions Mego.
He has collaborated with: Jim O’Rourke, Christian Fennesz, Dennis Cooper, Gisèle Vienne, Stephen O’Malley (as KTL), Tina Frank, Matmos, Tujiko Noriko, Kevin Drumm, Marcus Schmickler, Michaela Schwentner (aka Jade), Matt “Skitz” Sanders, Russell Haswell, Florian Hecker, Carlos Giffoni, Gert-Jan Prins, Mika Vainio, General Magic, Zbigniew Karkowski, Z’EV, Rosy Parlane, Keith Rowe, Sunn O))) as well as being a member of Mimeo.
In 1999 he received Prix Ars Electronica Distinction Award for Digital Musics, alongside Christian Fennesz.
Z’EV (born Stefan Joel Weisser, 1951) is an American text-sound artist, poet and mystic who is perhaps best known for his work as a catacoustic (reflected sound-based) percussionist. He has worked as a professional musician since 1963, and is regarded as a pioneer of industrial music.
Since 1984, he has been concentrating on performing in a more traditional mallet-percussion style, albeit with highly idiosyncratic and “extended” mallet percussion techniques and his self-made or adapted instruments.Both performance modes have been described as cacophonous when considered in traditional Western musical terms, because of the dense elemental acoustic phenomena Z’EV’s instruments produce. In point of fact, Z’EV doesn’t actually consider the results as “music” per se, but more as orchestrations of highly rhythmic acoustic phenomena.
