GENERAL MAGIC (AT) Ramon Bauer - laptop, electronics Andi Pieper - laptop, electronics
Duo consisting of Ramon Bauer and Andi Pieper, co-leaders of the Mego label
(along with Peter Rehberg). GM's favourite 'playgrounds' are software exploration,
ski pistes and motor sport circuits, whilst they also brilliantly demonstrate how
to create post-modern hymns with shards of popular music.
'Accidental electronica' duo General Magic is perhaps the strangest, least
stylistically constrained project on the Austrian Mego label's roster. Formed
by label bosses Ramon Bauer and Andi Pieper around the same time they established
Mego (GM's collaboration with Peter 'Pita' Bauer, 'Fridge Trax,' was the first
Mego release), GM released a pair of twelves on Mego, as well as a mini-LP (Live
and Final Fridge) on Source before releasing the full-length CD Frantz in 1997.
(The album was recorded in both Austria and Germany and contains source material
sampled from the rail line connecting the two cities.)
Like Panasonic and Autechre, General Magic limit their tonal color palette to
only a few categories of sound (drum machine, EQ, distortion, reverb) but manage
to construct tracks of exquisite detail and, somehow, variety, with influences
(where they are even recognizable) including dub, funk, techno,
ambient/electro-acoustic, and hip-hop.
