Mego · 2001
Glitch reimagined as beauty — Vienna's landmark of laptop music. The first vinyl pressing is Mego 035v (the CD is just 035, without the 'v').
In 2001, when most laptop music still sounded like a warning — cold, clinical, interested mainly in error and noise — Christian Fennesz did something almost heretical with the same tools: he made them beautiful. Endless Summer takes the glitch, the digital crackle, the disintegrating file, and drenches it in melody and warmth until the damage sounds like sunlight through a dirty window. It is Vienna's landmark of electronic music, and one of the records that proved the computer could be an instrument of tenderness, not just of rupture.
Fennesz came from guitar, and you can feel it under the processing — buried chords, strummed shapes, pop half-memories dissolved into digital haze. The title borrows, knowingly, from the Beach Boys and the whole American myth of summer, and the record plays like that myth heard through decades of decay: gorgeous, nostalgic, slightly broken, as if a pop song had been left out in the sun until it warped. Tracks like the title piece and Happy Audio build shimmering walls of processed tone that are unmistakably melodic even as they crackle and fray. This is not noise as aggression; it's noise as weather, as texture, as feeling.
It arrived on Mego, the Viennese label that had become the international headquarters of experimental electronic music — home to a scene that treated the laptop as seriously as any earlier generation had treated the synthesizer. But where much of that world prized abrasion, Fennesz went the other way, and Endless Summer became the record that carried the Vienna scene beyond the specialist audience: warm enough to seduce listeners who'd never sought out "glitch," rigorous enough to reshape the genre. It defined a moment and pointed a direction, and its influence runs through two decades of ambient, drone and electronic pop that followed.
It helps to know how it was made. Fennesz fed guitar and pop fragments through custom software until the source dissolved, then rebuilt melodies from the debris — so the crackle you hear isn't decoration but the actual texture of the process, the sound of music taken apart and lovingly reassembled. "Made in Hong Kong" opens the record in a wash of static that slowly reveals a tune; by the title track the method has become pure song. It's laptop music that never forgets it came from a guitar, and a heart.
What keeps it alive is exactly that emotional core. A great deal of early-2000s electronic music now sounds like a technical exercise, tied to the software of its day; Endless Summer transcends its tools because underneath the processing there are real songs, real feeling, a real ache for something lost. Play it now and it doesn't sound dated — it sounds like memory itself, which never goes out of fashion. It is proof that the most radical thing an experimental musician can do is move you.
For Vienna, it's a modern cornerstone: not the imperial city of Mozart and Mahler but the twenty-first-century Vienna of Mego and the laptop avant-garde, a place that quietly became one of the capitals of electronic music. Endless Summer is the record that scene will be remembered by — the moment Viennese experimentalism produced something the whole world could love.
More than twenty years on, it remains the essential document of Vienna's electronic era, and one of the most beautiful things ever made from the sound of things breaking.
Vienna's landmark of laptop music — glitch and digital decay turned into warmth and melody, as moving now as in 2001. The one to own is the first Mego vinyl pressing (035v); don't confuse it with the CD (035) or the later Editions Mego reissue.
Endless Summer on Vinyl — Which Pressing?
the catalogue number is the whole tell — the first vinyl pressing is 035v. The "v" matters: the CD edition is catalogued as plain 035, without the letter, while the vinyl carries 035v. Anyone selling you "the original 035" on vinyl is either describing the CD number or mislabelling a copy. Check the catalogue on the label and sleeve before anything else
the original label, Mego, folded and was succeeded by Editions Mego, which reissued the album; that later vinyl is a different edition and not the 2001 original. The pairing to confirm is simple but decisive: the Mego imprint (not Editions Mego) and the 035v catalogue. Together they identify the first pressing; either one alone can mislead
Endless Summer is a modern classic that has stayed in demand, so the reissue circulates widely and is easily mistaken for the original by buyers who don't know the 035 / 035v distinction — which is exactly why that single letter is the key to the whole thing. This is a case where authentication is unusually clean: get the catalogue and the imprint right and you have it
a median around ~€45 for the original Mego 035v — very reasonable for a record of this stature, reflecting that it's a modern grail of reputation rather than extreme scarcity. Treat the figure as an order of magnitude, and let the 035v catalogue and the Mego imprint, rather than the seller's enthusiasm, confirm a genuine first pressing
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What's the difference between 035 and 035v?
It's the whole authentication. The CD edition of Endless Summer is catalogue 035; the first vinyl pressing is 035v, with the 'v' for vinyl. If someone offers 'the original 035' on vinyl, they're quoting the CD number or mislabelling — the genuine first vinyl pressing is specifically Mego 035v.
How do I avoid buying the reissue by mistake?
Confirm two things together: the imprint is Mego (not the later Editions Mego, which reissued the album), and the catalogue is 035v. The original label folded and was succeeded by Editions Mego, so a copy on that later imprint is a reissue, not the 2001 original.
What does an original cost?
The original Mego 035v sits around a median of ~€45 — modest for a record this important, since it's a grail of reputation more than of scarcity. Prices move, so treat that as an order of magnitude, and let the catalogue and imprint, not the asking price, confirm it.
Where might I find one in Vienna?
Vienna's experimental and electronic-focused record shops are the natural place an original Mego pressing surfaces, and the city's scene knows the record intimately. Buying in person lets you check the 035v catalogue and the Mego imprint before you pay.
