below: ​Page 2 — an advertisement for my collaboration with Dave Wright of Not Breathing — Liquid Kumquat Generator. Personal edition home-brewed CD-R available for purchase and trade. Stream and download it here —

above: Page 9 — Collage page for the album titled Straphangers’ Ball by Straphangers’ Ensemble. Now available on Bandcamp for the first time! Personal edition home-brewed CD-R available for purchase and trade. Stream and download it here —

above: HALzine Issue #4 — Page 11 — Artwork panel for my collaborative album with Keith Nicolay titled Sounds From Micro Lounge. Personal edition home-brewed CD-R available for purchase and trade. Stream and download it here --

above: Page 13 — On May 2, 1997 I took the subway to visit Al Margolis and we recorded material which became our Bwana Dog album titled Receding Hairlines In Brooklyn — includes information on the rare Vako Orchestron electronic instrument. Personal edition home-brewed CD-R available for purchase and trade. Stream and download the album here —

Walter Campbell’s album notes:
Walterpurgisnacht IV is the fourth annual release celebrating Walterpurgisnacht, my personal take on Walpurgisnacht, a holiday rooted in German folklore and held on April 30th.

Improvised, single take, multi-track recordings with my Arturia Minilab synth. Minimal mixing and no edits. Ominous and meditative.

Walter Campbell’s album notes:
Over the Top is the fifth full-length, straight-to-digital release from book on VHS.

Both improvisational and structured in composition, the album's themes are unabashedly anti-war, anti-xenophobic, and anti-imperialist at a time when some of the worst and most ironic atrocities of our lifetimes are not only perpetuated but also replayed and shared, often to public silence and complacency in ways that further normalize racism, otherness and genocide while favoring persecution complexes and shameless performativity.

Musically, the group has abandoned pre-programmed drums in favor of real-time synth-based percussion playing, giving the compositions breathability and a more natural feel. First drums and then vocals were recorded before any other instrumentation, a new and refreshing approach for the band in collaborative songwriting and performing.

HM: On the Bandcamp album page you will find lyrics for all of the songs, which is a feature I appreciate very much! Here is a sample:

I’m allowed to be ashamed as an American
And still wanna fucking live here
I’m allowed to speak out against the leaders
Making decisions that harm and kill other people

You don’t dictate what is objective or authentic
Just because you speak loud and with a tired schtick
You don’t represent the population, just your brand
Making decisions that bomb and kill other people

You say justified
I say genocide
(Kill other people)

RL:
Building my own instruments gave me a new direction and approach to music. I created my own non chromatic tunings..each one is different and my own style of playing. I use a dulcimer hammer in my right hand and mute and bend strings with my left.

I enjoy a lot of middle eastern and east European music from countries like Bulgaria and Iran.

SB: I came up with the idea from something Derek Bailey said to Eugene Chadbourne during a set, "I was thinking we'd have all the acts play at the same time. It would save us an incredible amount of time."

We each did multiple performances
running about different locations about the house.
Will Fawcett documented with a Tascam field recorder.

​below is a selection of photos from minutefest by Jasper Dunesand

HM:
When I read an announcement on Bandcamp about a new album by The Head Cleaner, my friend Mike Gebel, I immediately purchased a download. It was not until after I downloaded it that I realized that the album is about two and a half hours in length! Usually, I would not download an album that long because I think it’s excessive and unnecessary. I usually don’t torture my own listeners for more than the length of a CD! But the price of this album had been right, Name Your Price — I had selected £1.

Upon listening to Toxic Avenger & The Big Mop Sound I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of sounds, noises, and styles — from abrasive noisy workouts to sample-driven excursions to dark ambient washes. While I was unable to listen to all of it in one sitting it kept my interest during my three listening sessions. It was funny in places, annoying in others, meditative & thoughtful in others.

I was amused by the subtext or theme of The Toxic Avenger series of movies. I asked Mike why he decided to use those movies as an inspiration or theme for his album and he told me that it was the idea of Institute For Alien Research label head Shaun Robert.

Mike told me that most of the 33 tracks were spontaneously created, "minimal multitracked". His primary instrument was the Roland SP555 sampler. He also used microcassette. To record he primarily used Audacity.

HM:
I asked him what gear he used to record the pleasing synthesizer pieces on The Tower Moment. Here’s what he told me…
Dug Fender:
On this album I used the Moog Grandmother, Mavis, DFAM, and a Behringer JT Mini, the Red Panda Particle pedal is on there, a couple different delay pedals and a Behringer spring reverb unit... I recorded everything with a Tascam DR-05 out from my mixer, very minimalist as far as mixing. I wanted it raw as possible.

Jason Cullup’s The Dollar Store E.P. is a 12-minute salvo from the freak-nerd lunatic fringe. I first found out about Pacific Northwest bricoleur Jason Cullup, who repurposes otherwise-useless cast-off electronic junk to make new music/noise instruments. For more about Jason, read my March Bandcamp Report.
This 6-track collection of five noisy songs and one instrumental is an hilarious celebration of mundane, everyday, cheap - and I do mean cheap! - consumer goods and junk food. The song lyrics almost read like shopping lists!
Check out the words of the first track, "Dollar Store Fish Sandwich":

Bags of Cooked Shrimp, Gummy Worms
Sweet Chili Sauce, Halloween Treats
Warming Lube, Hot Dogs
Tasty Steaks, THC Test Kits

All of the Fixins for a nice night in
Shelves full of delicious snacks
Ice Cold Drinks Begging to be Taken
Can't wait to sink my teeth into that
Dollar Store Fish Sandwich

Anti Diarrheal, pregnancy tests
toilet plungers, Cup o Noodles Tooth
Brushes, Pepperoni Sticks
USB Cables, Ren and Stimpy Figurines

I'm Wont To Believe is a new collection of five songs and two instrumentals by Jake Joyce, recording under the name Zbyszko Cracker. For an explanation of that artist name, see my March Bandcamp Report. I love these home multi-tracked pieces with Jake playing electric guitar, drums, bass, tablehooters, and singing personal lyrics that make me feel like I'm a neighbor who lives just down the block:

A pair of socks
A walk to work
Brown Line to the Loop

Bungalow housing
With a sliver of backyard
Enough for rabbits
And a couple of kids

Five year resident
Promoted to townie

DeKalb happily devours
All who step
in The Kish or otherwise

Liquor store black bag
And a 30 of Stroh's
You know you're in trouble
When they ask where you've been

Stare at the sky
Teal colored wall
Downtown is a fine place to weep

Stuck on flypaper  

Harold Schellinx:
We organized this uP edition the day before doing a public event at the Grand Hospice chapel in Brussels, where I was invited to perform (on Wednesday, March 26th) with Shih-wen Lee (a double bass player of Taiwanese origin, who has taken Jean Bordé’s place on the double bass in our Diktat quartet) and Huijun Yi (a jazz singer and guzheng player of Chinese origin; like Shih-wen, Huijun is a recent graduate of the Flemish Royal Conservatory of Brussels; both of them currently live in Brussels). The concert was part of a long-running series of free improvisation events in Brussels called OMFI (One Moment Free Improvisation), organized by, among others, sax wizard Jean-Jacques Duerinckx, with whom I used to perform as the duo A Table!
(Our Wednesday concert was the 54th in the OMFI series. My part of that evening’s story is here, including a link to a recording of our trio part.)

As on other occasions that I landed in Brussels, Frans Claus — who runs the Ateliers Claus, one of Brussels’ main venues for independent and alternative pop music — was kind enough to let us use his Ateliers' studio space to do our thing. ‘Us’, that Tuesday afternoon, were Shih-wen, Huijun, Jean-Jacques, myself, and Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg — vocal improviser and something of a Belgian free improv legend.

from the Bandcamp album page:
A collection of tracks played with an improvisational approach on a Mackie mixer using the “no-input mixing board” technique. No overdub or post-edit.

Giulio Fontana:
The inspiration for Auxtravaganza comes from just sitting and messing with the Mackie 1202 VLZ and bring up my experience and ear as a long time musician, the idea is to focus on the pure sound and make  complete free-form tracks.

My background as an electronic musician starts as a guitarist in various bands, then going solo experimenting with various synthesizers. In recent years I've published some albums under the name "Ogle" using the Buchla Music Easel, and I've only just started to produce more experimental works under my own name "Giulio Fontana".
​
​Obviously a big inspiration for me is the work of Toshimaru Nakamura, since he is the pioneer of the no-input mixer method.

Kazuya Ishigami:
One of the themes of my work is “memory.”

Recorded sounds are also memories, and at times these memories become complex, fragmented, and scattered. The intention behind works centered on the theme of memory is to reconnect and reconstruct scattered fragments of memory to create new memories.

​This work, Frozen Memories, uses sound materials whose origin and recording date are unknown to me. These sound materials were first edited into a completed work, which was then further processed and edited to the point where it no longer resembles its original form, resulting in a new work.
In a sense, this can be described as a chain of memories.

Gerardo Colin:
CRASH BAIL 2 is the follow-up to the first release of the same name, both released on OTCRAH RECORDS. Both are composed of altered, looped sounds taken from long sessions recorded at GeraCat Studio (the name of my den/room where I do all my housework).
The only difference between CRASH BAIL and CRASH BAIL 2 is that the first one was recorded at home using samples from those sessions. There were some I didn't use for the recording, so I decided to save them along with the ones I'd just used.
Later, I was inspired to make what was originally going to be CRASH BAIL 2, but due to issues related to my limited free time due to working a lot, I felt it wasn't time.

My friend Isaac (Stereo Torture) told me about an event he was organizing that was scheduled for late June 2024. He cordially wanted me to participate, so I did.
Saturday, June 29, 2024, was the day of ESPAGIRIA FRECUENCIAL, the name given to the event organized by my friend Isaac. He had previously collaborated and organized Psytrance events, a very popular electronic genre, but one that, in my opinion, is also too hidden in this city.
ESPAGIRIA FRECUENCIAL was his first event featuring pure experimental music and noise. The event took place in a well-known bar for many older people who, as young people, used to go there to drink or listen to music. I'm talking about Bar La Ranita, located in the municipality of Guadalupe, Nuevo León, near Monterrey.
The event, in addition to promising a performance from each project (including me), also included an art exhibition, Vegan Chili Dogs for sale, beers, soft drinks, flour chips, popcorn, and a pool table.

ESPAGIRIA FRECUENCIAL consisted of the following projects:
- Brvjo 
- Gerardo Colin
- Noel Zavala
- WXAXIXFXUX
- Deathtrip
- Stereo Torture
- Disertación Sonora

The event opened at 3:00 PM and ended around 2:00 AM the following day.
It began an hour later with a documentary on veganism,
​and the first project began once it concluded.

GC:
After Noel Zavala finished playing, I immediately got ready and began recording the environment to capture my performance, which is now CRASH BAIL 2.

In this presentation, I used some very distinctive samples from the first CRASH BAIL, and as I said before, I also used the ones I had saved around here.

7-minute video of Gerardo Colin performing CRASH BAIL 2
​at ESPAGIRIA FRECUENCIAL

GC:
The title CRASH BAIL is like a game to me; in Monterrey and its surrounding areas, there isn't a day free of traffic accidents. Most drivers buy their licenses without knowing the rules, much less how to drive safely behind the wheel. A political puppet once said that this is an industrial city, money is made here in many ways, but sometimes those ways are acts of corruption, kickbacks that give you happiness for a brief moment and the next day you leave this world and CRASH BAIL is a play on words where death and entrepreneurship towards another world are the bailout for every accident on wheels.

Conexión I (OTCRAH.RP83) After my performance at ESPAGIRIA FRECUENCIAL, Noel Zavala came back online and together with me we made another hour of noise together.

Following my decision to close OTCRAH RECORDS, I've been working on a personal website where you'll find a lot of information about my projects: https://gchnw.wordpress.com/

HACEMOS RUIDO is the collective organized by Daniel Zepeda (Brvj0) that brings together a whole community of experimental and noise music artists from Monterrey and its surroundings as well as from states close to ours: https://www.instagram.com/hacemos.ruido/

​VICTOR BADILLO is a great friend of mine who has already come to Monterrey and I have visited him in the State of Mexico. He is the one behind the creation of the instruments I own now. Follow him closely: https://www.instagram.com/_victor_ba/

----------
When I founded OTCRAH RECORDS in 2019, I kicked things off with a few releases from j.c.19 and Tobi Topazio, these being some of the many side projects I've had since I started making music in 2014. But now that I'm a director, I decided it was time for the public to know me for who I am, so I put aside my stage names and started publishing under my real name. Although I like Dadaism and minimalism, everything I do simply represents a whole of my own being. I'm not drawn to any popular movement; I just do it and that's it.

Watch Gintas K creating Atmosfera in the YouTube video below. Gintas used Plogue Bidule modular audio software with a MIDI controller, and he recorded everything live without any overdubs. Gintas created the sounds spontaneously, without prior conception, as it came to him as he played.

​Andreas Rönnquist:
The Fourth State is basically the search for some kind of (what would be in religious terms called) nirvana - and in my interpretation the final goal in the search for creativity, reached through whatever method you want, like for example meditation. Liberating yourself from all that is not needed, and finding the ultimate focus in your own individual way.

It was created with guitars (both electric and acoustic, bowed and e-bowed), recorded and heavily digitally manipulated, field recordings and found sounds.

Inspirations are classic drone, dark ambient, industrial and experimental music in general, but also literature and movies from a wide range of artists, writers, and creators.

On April 9, 2025 the SQUARED WAVE open aux electronic music series celebrated its fourth anniversary of monthly music nights in an outdoor setting
​at 4th Avenue Food Park in Gainesville, Florida.

SQUARED WAVE is organized and curated by Kevin Miller and Mark Rodriguez,
and is presented by SquareHouse Pizza.

Here are my previous SQUARED WAVE reports:
SQUARED WAVE 03-12-25
SQUARED WAVE 02-12-25

SQUARED WAVE curator Mark Rodriguez provided numerous synthesizers and other pieces of electronic kit for the audience members to try. 

Hal McGee:

This is Part 2 of my report on albums I downloaded at Bandcamp during the month of March 2025.
Read Part 1.

As I composed this article I gave all of the albums a second or even third listen, and I really savored the experiences of the sounds! Across these 18 albums I immersed myself in the sounds and tried to live within them, to give myself over to the sound events, and to let my imagination run wild wherever it might want to go.

My effort here is not to dictate my interpretations of the music. These are not reviews! This is not a consumer guide! You won't find ratings of 1 to 5 stars.

Rather, you will find albums by people I consider friends. Some of these friends I have known for decades, some I have met in-person and others I have never met but consider them good friends, and others I barely know anything about. I think of these albums as gifts, as reciprocal exchanges. I traded download codes of my own music albums on Bandcamp for many of the albums I am showcasing here. Others I purchased for a dollar or two because the artist generously offered the albums for my enjoyment with a minimal Name Your Price option. I am a big believer in COMMUNITY, in the community of artists. I believe this is possible even in the digital music world.

Listening is not passive. To me it is always active. The artists I listened to here created these sounds out of necessity, out of the desire to share, and I as the listener complete the sound art through attentive listening.
​
Below you can click on each of the big album covers to go directly to the Bandcamp album pages, plus you will find Bandcamp audio players for each album. I asked some of the artists to give the EC readers more info, and I have included their comments whenever possible. I have attempted to give you my personal impressions of some, but not all, of the albums.

It is always best for you to experience the sounds directly yourself, as true primary experiences without mediation from me or anyone else. All I have done here is provide clues, data, maps, and suggested listening cues. You will develop your own relationships with these sounds, and hopefully you will follow your own paths of discovery based on what you read and hear here. If you like some of the albums I have chosen, be sure to investigate other Bandcamp albums by the artists and labels.

I am going to start out Part 2 with two albums by local Florida artists.

HM:
​WorkFromHome is a Gainesville, Florida recording and performance act, and I cannot recommend their album MourningCommute enough! This is seriously one of the best albums I have listened to in a long time. Bitingly-funny songs about daily life in our present digital dystopia — with jittery, mechanistic rhythms and hilarious and frightening plunderphonics-style sound clips and samples from sources such as customer service phone call recordings, board-meeting teleconferences, motivational infomercials etc.
​I was first exposed to WorkFromHome through this live performance video recorded by Andrew Chadwick at Action Research #231. It includes a couple of songs that ended up on MourningCommute.

   After taking over the project, I began working on MourningCommute - WorkFromHome’s first album. I wanted to create something to vent my frustrations involving work.
   My main stylistic inspiration for WorkFromHome is Negativland, a plunderphonics group that has been putting out music since the late 70s. Their shotgun spread sampling of radio and television seemed like the perfect vehicle to explore modern topics. Their album Dispepsi explored consumerism through the Coke and Pepsi advertising war. I enjoy the way they’re able to recontextualize their sampling and I try to bring that into my work.
   Other inspirations come from the office aesthetics of Office Space and (unfortunately) Dilbert. I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time online and have been inspired by YouTube Poops and Soundclown.
   Musically I draw from hyper pop artists like Underscores and 100 gecs as well as the work of Laurie Anderson.
   My compositions usually begin with dragging and dropping random instruments and effects into my DAW and trying to make it work. I have a huge library of samples that I collect in my scrolling online and I usually have a topic in mind and samples for that topic that I can arrange on the timeline.​

HM:
Next up we have a new album by Velma and the Happy Campers, the one man band of A.J. Herring (formerly of Gainesville, now in Ocala). A.J. has been super active in local music circles for more than a decade, at Action Research shows, Apartment Music, and much more, and he has collaborated with me in our project Canned Ham.

I asked A.J. Herring to tell us about Asheville and here is what he had to say:
   These songs were written and the basic tracks were recorded in late July/August in 2019 over a two-week period after a trip that Shelby and I took to Asheville, North Carolina. The songs are all based upon events that happened on the trip. At the time, I was going to go on vacation and be extremely broke for a month because I had to use any extra money I had to take certification courses for my job teaching elementary music which was at best bleak.
​   They were originally meant to be a part of my Lo Fi Therapy series of albums made in very periods of time but like my other attempts to do this, it took longer so I decided to make this a full album.
   Now comes the part where it ends up sitting on a hard drive for a while. I start work in August of 2019 and start off the school year struggling. Then life happens: dogs get sick and die, COVID happens, my mental health goes in and out in a swirl, writer’s block and self-doubt issues etc. etc. I still have an album worth of Velma songs from this period that I am trying to get together and record and this is part of the backlog.
   In 2022 I decided to finish these. I expanded the tracks and added bass parts and had to relearn a lot of the songs or even rerecord some of the things I already did and then added the field recordings and the orchestrations of extra guitar parts, keyboard parts, drones, and whatever else was slammed in there.
   I was originally going to release these on a label of my own but couldn’t get anything going. I couldn’t commit to artwork; I was criticizing my rusty tape layout skills, and honestly just beating myself up over it. 2024 rolls around and when Waylon Thornton started trying to put out more tapes on Floating Skull (he also put out the 2019 Velma album Permatemp) I sent it to him and he agreed.

Here’s a brief breakdown of what the songs are about:
- Phil: I met Phil at Stardust Video & Coffee in Orlando in 2013 who told me I should smoke weed to deal with my foot-tapping anxiety and move to Asheville.
- The First Eight Hours: What do you think about when you are just driving?
- The Call of the Yellow Jacket: Shelby got stung by a yellow jacket and had a pretty strong reaction to it. It was an issue most of the trip.
- Angel Olsen: We met the singer Angel Olsen. She seemed nice. I was a little jealous of her success in music.
- Bludded Head: A sludge metal band featuring a cello. The main person died of cancer I think. I found both of their records at Static Age in Asheville.
- Mitchell: Elisha Mitchell who “founded” Mt. Mitchell died after falling off a nearby mountain.
- Ghost of a Friend: Sometimes things happen and friendships come to an end.
- College Towns: Came from a conversation about how hard life can be in college towns.
- The Moonlight Over Savannah: There’s a lot of paid parking in Savannah.
- The Next Few Weeks: Anxiety and depression from having to go back to my job very broke after summer break.

HM:
​Watch this video of Velma and the Happy Campers at Action Research #166 and you will see what I mean about "one man band"...

HM:
​A crunchy and crusty compilation "encompassing harsh noise, HNW (Harsh Noise Wall), cut-up, drone and glitch from local and international artists". Another fun and enjoyably annoying release from the Welcome to Clydebank label (Scotland). 12 tracks logging in at just under an hour. Most of these artists are new to me, which is good. The only names I recognize are Brent Gutzeit and Stockport Swimming Team.

HM:
​I was drawn to this split album by the album title!

26 tracks, with the longest being 44 seconds in length. I found this album hysterically funny. Don't ask me why! The Bandcamp album page describes it as:
  "The raging homosexual sample abuser known as Sam Fauchon returns with another Vomit Hurdy Gurdy split, this time with veteran noise otaku Princess Army Wedding Combat. Beyond 200bpm earfuckery of butchered pop+anime, ear splitting noise and ADHD breaks all mashed together like a violent car crash (in the most beautiful way possible)."

A quick look at the song titles, some of which take longer to read than the song lasts:
- "Ken Violently Chainsaws Barbie After The Condom Broke To Avoid Fatherhood" - "Studded Cuffs Are Totally Sweet Cause They Trick My Brain Into Thinking Nietzsche Is Giving Me A Handjob"
- "Getting Name-Dropped By Japshitfun Is Still My Greatest Musical Achievement"
-"Unconvincingly Telling People I Made These Tracks Using Oblique Strategies Or Something To Somehow Make Them Seem More Legitimate"

Got it?! Okay, now listen below! 

HM:
Next, I want to share with you two Bandcamp albums by t0rphy:
Constellations Zodiacales and Phénomène Magnétique. 

HM:
​I asked Phil Rodrigues to elaborate for the EC readers upon the ideas, themes, inspirations and instrumentation used on these two awesome albums of minimal abstract electronic space music.

​Phil Rodrigues (t0rphy):
   My tracks are created through intuition, feeling, chance and spontaneity.The theme is essentially based on magnetic waves, electronic "futuristic" sounds.
   I have often recorded sounds from logistics companies. 
   I use Wavepad to transform the samples and then AbletonLive 11 for creation.
   I use the FM8, Arturia keylab mk3, Serum, in the pack(full Bucket Music) I mainly use the FB-3300, FB-7999, u-he with Diva and Podolski, Synth1, 
Korg-Monopoly, Synthmaster Vital and many others.
   I also use the Tascam DR-05 to record sounds.

HM:
​I asked Theo Nugraha and Chris Phinney to tell the EC readers about this split album.
I was curious as to why it is a three-way split:
Two tracks by Theo, and two by Phinney under his own name and under his Mental Anguish moniker...

Theo Nugraha:
   I come from Samarinda City, Kalimantan, Indonesia.
   I have been active since 2013 and the first Pioneer noise or experimental sound in my city. You can see my discography on Bandcamp or Discogs.
   I am proud and honored to be able to split with Mental Anguish & Chris Phinney. I know they have their own egos and sound characteristics even though they are the same person but I don't want to choose one of those projects. I want both and when else can that be as long as Phinney agrees lol.
   Being part of the Harsh Reality Music label is also an honor even though I have not been active in your era. Happy to be part of the history of cassette culture and underground experimental. Maybe not all of my generation or after my generation know much.
   My composition is field recording, I play a lot with this sound and other combinations. Indirectly I introduce the sound of my region. This split is not only correspondence but also the identity of each sound and culture.
   For me, making a split album is a commitment and consistency in my work besides corresponding as a sound artist.

Chris Phinney:
   Theo wanted me to do a three-way as Mental Anguish & Phinney, I said what? Yes ok so my pieces went two different styles. No themes involved. All done wham bam thank you ma'am. Separate artists is how Theo wanted it. I did dark-ambient, Anguish; light atmospheric-ambient, me. I asked him why as I am the same artists. He said both my artist name & real name are well-known. He had heard recordings under both monikers, so he wanted both.
   I used my usual stuff —Moog, Locomotive VST, FX etc.

HM:
​I first found out about Jason Cullup's Tape Deck Death album in the extensive interview with him at Jake Joyce's Stuburban blog. Read it here.

Over the course of 20 minutes we hear the sounds of this electronic beast struggling to stay alive. I found this experience oddly soothing!

Jason Cullup tells us about how he created Tape Deck Death:
   Tape Deck Death started out with a malfunctioning tape deck from a thrift shop. It made noises with no tape inserted. So I started to do a recording of me poking and prodding around on the circuit board. Like an improv circuit bending recording. As the session went on I became more careless on what I touched. Hoping to achieve some magic wacky sound before it died. The tape deck didn’t want to die. I finally got it to fail by using drops of water directly to the circuit board. I then harvested some of my favorite parts to add to my collection of parts to build with. To record the audio I used the headphone jack straight into my Zoom H1N recorder. I use that free Audacity computer program to trim dead air and usually add a fade in and/or out. 

HM:
​I asked Lloyde Olonko (Telford!) and Dylan Thomas Bohrer of Ghost On This Earth to tell the EC readers more about how they collaborated and their ideas, inspirations and gear behind the making of Train to Vggnitti.

Dylan Thomas Bohrer:
   The inspiration for this album came from listening to garage rock. And of course the band Sonic Youth as the harsh tones in some of the tracks suggest. Specifically the Sonic Youth album with the track "Kool Thing". I also took inspiration from various experimental artists on Bandcamp.
   I used FL studio and Audacity for the production.
   Themes on Train to Vggniti: basically about Urban exploration and being a musical artist who does not follow rules set by the genre. Example: production rules. About the urban exploration theme. Since I've always loved looking at abandoned building exploration videos. The title represents the possibilities of what went on inside. Before the building was forgotten. History etc.
   I wanted to produce something on FL studio that was much different than my usual "dark Ambient". Also in a much shorter song form. Telford sent recordings of his garage rock. And I basically messed around with them sometimes. Removing parts of the sent recordings for later in the tracks only. I used multiple field recordings I recorded in real life also. Including talking and outside sounds. Delays and distortion. Also reverb is very present on this album. 
   Also, for the more quieter tracks I incorporated more ambient tones. As far as the song titles go I really did not put much thought into them. Because most of the titles were the exported titles and at the time of the production I was pre-occupied with the difficulty of blending ambient and experimental music with guitar and drums.

​Lloyde Olonko (Telford!):
   Train to Vggnitti is the second collaboration between Ghost On This Earth & Telford!. Dylan did a spectacular job with our previous effort Tumbling House of Bricks, so I doubled down with some new material. Half of my contributions were Tascam analog four track rehearsal demos; the other half were PreSonus DAW compositions.
   Dylan’s inspiration was spurred by the Sonic Youth album Goo, thus he immediately got to work & polished off our album within 48 hours! Honestly, I felt the conclusion to be premature & questionable, but in an extraordinary way. It positively aroused my curiosity. Dylan has an uncanny ability to remove ego from song & create a unique sonic parallel universe.
   Days later, I took a daunting risk traveling through a heavy evening blizzard. While creeping along the highway, snow-blind in pitch darkness, ‘Train to Vggnitti’ was playing on my truck stereo. This was my absolute epiphany of this album’s existence; a soundtrack that yearns for hope in utter desolation! I’m eternally grateful to participate in this spirited trust fall with Dylan; he’s simply the best!

Juan Cepas on his methods to record Microwaves:

   I don’t stick to one way of composing. Usually, I start by recording something in the computer—often with a guitar or whatever sound I have on hand—and that becomes the starting point. Then I keep layering sounds and tracks until it feels right. By the end, that first recording is often totally transformed or barely recognizable.
   I use a mix of sound sources. The electric guitar is my main one, sometimes played using extended techniques. I also use field recordings (some made with a Zoom recorder, others just on my phone). For example, there's a coffee machine on the track "Bathtub", a mountain stream on "zzzooot", and chimes on "March of the Slugs". There’s also a toy vibraphone in "Bathtub", an Arturia Minifreak synth in "March of the Slugs", and I also use a contact mic to capture textures by rubbing or scratching surfaces. Effects pedals are a big part of it too—on this album I’ve used the Red Panda Radius, EHX Mainframe, and Death By Audio Rooms quite a bit. On top of that, I also use software plugins for extra editing and mastering.

HM:
​What we have here is a satisfying collaboration of NNJA RIOT (Lisa McKendrick, also a member of Isn'tses - see below) and PARADOX ENCOUNTER GROUP (Paul Harrison) that stays crunchy all the way to the bottom of the bowl. I know of Paul's work through his cassettes in the 1990s under the name Expose Your Eyes. Dissent Particles was issued by Barry Scheffel's Fusion Audio Recordings label (Ohio, USA).

The Bandcamp album page describes Dissent Particles this way:
​"Electronic avant-pop collides with noise manipulation, resulting in Dissent Particles, a frantic collaborative album from UK-based artists Lisa McKendrick (Isn'tses) and Paul Harrison (Expose Your Eyes)."
My fave track on the album is "Echo Chamber".

Lisa McKendrick:
   From my side, most of the album was recorded in my studio in London. I used hardware for everything I recorded making beats and other sounds with the Octatrack, Behringer Edge, Behringer Cat, and a few other self built synths including our Chernobylizer synth. Paul sent me some samples which I loaded into my Octatrack and did weird and interesting mixes with this.
   The field recordings of dogs and birds were made when I was in Italy, in a small town where the dog barks echoed quite loudly through the streets, making a predominant ambience. Also I made recordings of waterfalls in the mountains. I think the local people found me quite strange and I was described as a blonde woman standing on the corner of the road holding a strange device (which was the Zoom recorder with the fluffy wind shield on top). I found it interesting to play with this stereotype of woman standing on the corner of the road. The vocals I recorded in the studio were done with tons of gain and distortion using a valve guitar pedal going through a rack mount compressor so that everything wasn't clipping with such crazy distortion I was putting it through, again using hardware for this rather than a plug-in.
   I emailed what I had made to Paul and he was able to add his own elements to the mix using his unorthodox use of computers (which he will hopefully tell you more about). Sometimes Paul would send 3 versions of a track and we would decide which was best and maybe make a few changes via email.
   I do prefer using hardware for most of what I do, I think this is because I am a guitar player and to me making music is about being away from a screen as much as possible.

HM:
​Fletina is a Scottish sound artist & field recordist who creates raw abstract audio collages using found objects, room sounds, environmental noises, household items, mechanical devices and various electronic manipulation techniques. Non-music for the non-masses. 
Louise is a 36-minute long abstract sound composition filled with puttering vibrations, haunting drones and field recordings of a blazing fire...

Fletina told us this:
   My sound works usually aren't of a personal nature, but this one was. It was created from manipulated field recordings I took of a barn fire and some of the environmental sounds and sonic phenomena that occurred in the surrounding area - both during the fire and afterwards... Alongside these field recordings are layers of ''found sounds'', mechanical drones and non-musical noise experimentation. The whole thing was recorded using nothing but a Zoom Hn1 sound recorder and Ableton Live software. 

Walter Wright had this to say about how Alpha Bete was constructed:
   How was the album put together? David sent out (2) sound files for us to respond to, one for Al & one for myself. Mine was 8min long. I converted it to mono, stretched it to 10min, and placed the result on the left and right channels; offsetting the right channel by 5min. I sent this on to Al who added his sounds. This became track 1 on the album. Then I sent out (2) sound files, one for Al & one for David. These became tracks 2 & 3. For track 4, I took a stereo track of David's and ran it through Audacity's Vocoder effect. Then I ran two of my drum tracks through the vocoder, resulting in  hi-end scratches and squeak.  Finally a transformed  field recording from the I64/Sunset Ave overpass appears in both tracks 3 & 4.
   The title for the album refers to Marshall McLuhan's discussion of the invention of the alphabet in "The Gutenberg Galaxy." The difference between 'oral' vs 'literate' cultures. This difference is what Exodus Crow is alluding to [on the album page liner notes] as he tells the story of his name in Jane Urquhart's "Away." The final quote from McLuhan's "Understanding Media," spells out the difference between sensing the world in an 'auditory' as opposed to a 'literate' manner - acting and reacting at the same time.

Lackthrow:
   The title refers to: When I was younger...12ish-I don't know-16 wish my church 'didn't realize it was a cult at the time'. For several years in there we had a 'ski trip' to Seven Springs in Pennsylvania. So, we'd drive up there in groups from Virginia, and I had some pretty intense moments up there, formative stuff.
   The 'wood-burning' bit refers to a big fireplace in the center of one of their inside places...the feel, the smells, the sounds of the crackling wood. Magical nostalgia for me. It was kind of in the center of this huge room to the one side was a dining area, where breakfasts usually happened, lots of sweet bakery stuff going on there and bacon ...oh man, the smells... mixed with the smokey burning wood smells. Attached were halls on either side and a few dispensing machines and of course doors on opposite sides leading directly to the rest of the snow-covered surroundings. The buildings and what went on in them was for me, at that time, nothing short of magical. Granted, who knows how fucked up that was, what with all my teenage hormones racing, my first tastes of freedom with friends and 'special moments'...
   It's clearly uninteresting to anyone and the more I talk about it the more I feel like it really shouldn't be talked about.  anyway, that's what the title is in reference to, but clearly just for me.
   If it evokes some sort of ANYTHING in anyone else, well, that's kind of the point. Once it's "published" it isn't mine any more in a sense of it having just one specific meaning or whatever.

more comments from Lackthrow:
   The title of the first track, 'arcade by the pool', directly relates to a ton of very specific nostalgia from that 'resort' or whatever you'd call it as well.
   As far as equipment used, I never talk about those sort of things, I have on occasion, but typically the way I go about effecting and arranging sounds vary from thing to thing and I often can't remember given enough distance from it...a year even sometimes. In this case however, there's sonic theme running through out, an over reliance on sounds of me manipulating plastics. The obvious exception being 'won't go into it' which is just voice and guitar supplied by Drew Farris aka mayfairgrin. I don't know that any of this would be of interest to you or fit for anyone else to know (particularly drew's brief contribution of source).
   If you found "SOMETHING" in there of any interest, then mission accomplished and ...well, that's just fantastic really. I mean, like I was saying, whatever meaning or origins are far as titles and themes or whatever are up for grabs and like better left to the interpretation of anyone checking out it. After I make the thing, it's everyone else's in that regard. ​

HM:
I got a huge thrill listening to Children of the Noise by Black Saturn vs subduxtion. The best or maybe easiest way I can describe it in a general way is: experimental cosmic hip-hop noise. It is a collection of tracks dating back almost two decades by the duo of Black Saturn and subduxtion.

​I asked Black Saturn to tell us about his partnership with subduxtion, and here is what he said:
   subduxtion is the Sound Maker the Frequency Innovator; Black Saturn is the WordSound Engineer. subduxtion makes the beats. I write, record & mix the vocals. subduxtion does the mastering. I make the videos. That's the basic formula of Black Saturn vs. subduxtion since we met on MySpace in the latter half of the early 2000's.
   Children Of The Noise was subduxtion's idea, a compilation of released & unreleased tracks from our time at Alrealon Musique going back to 2008. The full Black Saturn vs. subduxtion catalog is still available on Alrealon Musique for fans & the curious.
   We are an ongoing project dropping self-releases. From time to time in-between solo's & collaborations with other artists. You can find our previous & current Black Saturn vs. subduxtion release Children Of The Noise on our individual Bandcamp pages & social media.
Shout out to Trey Crim, the quiet unseen member of Black Saturn vs. subduxtion that's been doing our artwork for almost 20 years. Appreciate You!!!!!

Black Saturn's Bandcamp site
subduxtion on Bandcamp - includes collabs with Black Saturn

Here is how the sonic roadmap of the album is described on the Bandcamp album page:
Travel back in time to MySpace 2007, collision course dead ahead…Black Saturn vs subduxtion. Having collaborated for nearly two decades! Black Saturn vs subduxtion take a look back at their collaborative history with the release of ‘Children Of The Noise’. Assembling b-sides, demos, alternate mixes and compilation tracks the twenty tracks presented here are not a “best of” or the definitive sound of Black Saturn vs subduxtion. They are a look inside the hardware at the process by which they arrived at their singular sound world, as well as a chance to look back at how it started and just maybe, provide a signpost of where they go from here.

Here is what Lisa McKendrick had to say about Punctum:
   Looking back at the album it was nearly impossible to include all the different places we recorded so we described it as being “of mysterious origin” as we mostly could not remember where all the recordings were from so it remains a mystery. But as I recall it was the best moments of the many live sets or jams we had. We didn’t want the tracks to be 30 minutes long so we took the best part from live recordings we had. Everything is recorded in a live setting. We would do things on stage that were completely random using different set ups each time we played. They were always very raw and in the moment. I was at that time familiarising myself with lots of electronic gear and it was all experiments as my background was as a guitarist and songwriter.
   One of the tracks “A Block of” was recorded in the bizarre attic of Islington Mill in Manchester which is basically an unorthodox loft space. I was playing guitar on that track and we were using an 1-bit drum machine.

Tim Drage on Punctum:
   Yes it's the Buranelectrix Lunchbeat, a tiny 1-bit groovebox which we have built a couple of from kits. I think Lisa programmed it and I was twiddling the knobs.
  That track was recorded on a borrowed 16-track Zoom digital recorder and we liked the sound so much we bought the same model ourselves and still use it a lot to this day.
   The Ghostbox, one of my oldest and best DIY instruments, features quite heavily on a lot of these tracks too. The circuit originally came from a Ghostbusters voicechanger toy but it no longer has a mic input; instead it's very circuitbent with internal feedback and works as a self-contained noise instrument which makes harsh noise and weird pitch-shifted voice-ish synth tones, laser noises and even kind of pummeling gabber kicks. It's housed in the the casing of an old army-style radio and has somehow survived many years of live use with only minor repairs needed.

TD:
​   We also used a lot at that time a 'U-create Music' toy sampler thing, it can sample two loops on the fly and also we'd hacked it to replace all the default drum beats etc with our own Noise loops. Also various other circuitbent gear such as Lisa's bent toy laptop.
   The album tracklist is a poem by Lisa.

   The cover art features some finger puppets we made to include with limited edition DIY cassette release, they're kind of Luchador doodle creatures inspired by the genuine Mexican wrestling masks we wear on stage.
We made an improvised al-fresco stop motion animation with them too --
You can watch watch it on YouTube

Isnt'ses live performance video from about the same time as Punctum
Isn'tses website
Isn'tses Etsy Shop

HM:
Some really great spooky and creepy free improvisational madness, recorded in Alabama. Four tracks, two of which are titled "Snacks Dungeon", with instrumentation consisting of guitar, pedals, vocals, keyboards, loops, percussion, banjo, gadgets, 4track, fx, objects.

Ryan Jetten:
   Mayham- Will is an old friend who makes music with me as ThreeTon Monday. We get together most Sundays these days and we decided to invite Scott Bazar over to make music with us as well as our friend Apnodi. We set up mics and phones all over the room to record, then I sorted through and cut it up into all the pieces. No manipulations (very mild if any, except for rearranging the order of the pieces), just straight-up improvisation. Me and Scott have been friends for a long time and have collaborated on several albums.  

'My name is Ali Murray. I'm a Scottish-Filipino songwriter/musician from the Isle of Lewis, which is a cold windy island in the north of Scotland. I write dark introspective ambient/drone music under the name The Lonely Bell.
​
"Impermanence, Unfolding... ​is a hazy 34-minute long rippling sonic meditation dronescape, self-released on my own label, Dead Forest Records."

The 52nd edition of the Apartment Music series was held on Friday, April 4, 2025.

​Apartment Music is a long-running series (since July 2008) of concerts and sessions of sound art, experimental and electronic music in Hal McGee’s apartment in Gainesville, Florida.

We are always happy to have new performers at Apartment Music, and this time we had two — Damon Nobles and Flora Flora. 

First I will show you four photos of the Apartment Music family gathering and hanging out before the show. Then videos of the performances.

Hello Friends!

March was a busy month full of sonic adventure for me on Bandcamp!
I downloaded and listened to 33 albums by new and old friends.
I listened to all of the albums again as I composed this article.
I have divided the March album reports into two parts.
Below is Part 1.
​Read Part 2.

These Bandcamp Reports of mine are my simple, modest attempts
to show appreciation and support for the music and audio art
​of my friends, peers, comrades, and fellow travelers.

I have offered a few introductory words for each album, some more than others. I am not inclined to write reviews. This is not a review column!
This is not a consumer guide with ratings and 1 to 5 stars.
This is about community, sharing, love, and support — things every artist needs.
When possible I have added additional information by the artists themselves, in their own words.

The best and most direct way to experience this music is to listen.
I have provided Bandcamp audio players for all of the 15 albums below.
It costs nothing to stream the music.
If you like what you hear, purchase a download for optimum sound quality.
I always select WAV files when I download. 

I purchased most of these Bandcamp album downloads for a dollar or two.
I traded download codes of my own Bandcamp albums for some of these albums below.

Read my previous Bandcamp Reports:
​January                              February

My first Bandcamp album purchase in March 2025 was Ghost Wind, consisting of six laid-back, chill instrumentals totaling 37 minutes by long-time home studio recording artist Don Campau. Keyboards, percussion, samples, and open-road guitar-work. I have known Don since the 1980s and I consider him to be an essential figure in any history of Cassette Culture of the 1980s. Do yourself a favor and head on over to his website for a deep dive into homemade music culture.

Arrangements in Grey and Black captures the sound of two half-hour improvisations in Berlin and Warsaw the summer of 2023 by Bad Groupy - Jeff Surak and Kris Kuldkepp. A close listen rewards headphone-equipped attentive listeners with a wide variety of textures, treatments and dynamic range. Tapes, objects, and electronics backwash, scrape and throb like memories of dreams from last week.

Jake Joyce is a new friend of mine who lives in the burbs west of Chicago, and I am just starting to scratch the surface of the wide-ranging offerings of his Brown Bear Records label. Last month I reported on a dino synth collab of his, and here on Everything Is Fucked we have answering machine messages, samples and tape loops, and minimalist freeform rap.
​
On the two longest tracks, over a mechanistic drum machine, bass and kalimba groove, Jake declaims poems dealing with topics such as the pitfalls of celebrity worship, daily life in an oligarchy, scams, consumerism, faulty insurance policies, and the hopeless frustrations of existence in the current toxic alternative politico-cultural timeline, when decisions are made for us by algorithms, media figures and “influencers".

In the second track, "A Comedian" (check out the lyrics on the Bandcamp page), he raps about comedians who directed him not to vote. I asked him who he was referring to.

​Jake Joyce:
George Carlin is the first verse. I actually consider him a "hero" of sorts, but I disagree with him on a handful of his bits from the past, such as voting/global warming/the use of racial slurs, etc. I think a lot of those thoughts come from a different time period, but there are still a lot of people who cling to them just because Carlin said them. Ironically enough, I think he would hate to know that people were blindly following everything he said "just because." 
The rest of the song is aimed at the Joe Rogan/Shane Gillis/Theo Von crowd.  

I asked Jake the significance of the artist name Zbyszko Cracker and he told me:

​Several years ago, my friend Tony and I were coming up with band names that were puns of wrestler names. He said he wanted to start a band called "Grindcore Holly" which was a take on 90's WWF wrestler Hardcore Holly, and I jokingly said I would start a band called "Zbyszko Cracker" which was a reference to 80's AWA/90's WCW wrestler Larry Zbyszko, and, as you pointed out, the delicious Nabisco cracker.

Imperial Lunar Matrix is a gorgeous album of lo-fi synthesizer music, created with the simplest of tools. Proof that a person does not need hundreds or thousands of dollars to create effective electronic music.
​
​The album cover photo admirably conveys the feelings and moods of this album, which in spite of its synthetic nature possesses a deep emotional undercurrent of loss and remorse, and operates in a sphere of one eternal NOW, forever.

Dylan Houser:
I recorded the raw tracks via a sound recording app, and then messed around and slowed down the tracks in an another audio editing app, adding reverb and delay and trying my damnedest to reduce the clipping. The first track made for the album was the closing title track, which came about as a complete fluke and I liked how it sounded, so I went ahead and messed around with a few more recordings, and the album was complete.

​The opening and closing tracks on the album were initially recorded on the night my cat Jake (aka “Jakether”) was euthanized. The cover photo was taken at some subdivision in Mulberry, FL called Imperial Lakes, hence part of the title.

Gabe Konrad’s Grey Tissue project was covered in an article by Jerry Kranitz here at the EC website back in early February. Those two cassette releases were of the aggressive, industrial strain of the electronic realm.
​
​On Boardwalk (released on the Japanese label NEUS-318) we have something completely different:
"Field recordings of a wetlands nature walk with calling birds and rumbling trucks, scurrying deer and soaring airplanes. Manipulated, twisted and stretched from calm resonance to chaotic noise.”

During both of my listens I found Boardwalk meditative and brain-pleasing. Definitely music that is meant for a close listen with ear-goggles.

I had a lot of fun listening to Jettten’s ​Million Seller Shits album.
​Multi-tracked improvisation-based romps with scads of general lo-fi mayhem.

​On the Bandcamp album page the information is sparse.
All it says is:
​"RJ- table, objects, percussion, Casio, Steadman Pro, toys, mics, laptop, Audacity”, so I asked Ryan to tell me more.

​Ryan Jetten:
I used to record all my live sounds with my phone voice memo app then email that to myself then convert files then build my pieces in Audacity. Then I bought a 2channel PreSonus interface for my laptop but really for the interview show. Just recently I decided to record my noise into it. The other Jettten albums are from the phone and don't have the live room stereo field. I'm glad you noticed that! For that album, I had my objects on a maybe 6 feet metal folding table with one mic on each end of the table creating a stereo field. And did several fumbling of the objects in various manners across the table. But then I just arbitrarily smashed takes on top of each other and I will edit all that to create little "movements" within the piece using Audacity effects occasionally. Steadman Pro is a zebra striped electric guitar. It is on one track. I have no traditional knowledge of how to make music. I'm 51 now so I've settled into my ways, which are based on mistakes and chance mostly. 

Ryan Jetten’s MakeWorldGooder Recordings Bandcamp label is super active!

REANIMATOR by GOZNE

I was quite happy to find this archival reissue on Bandcamp of GOZNE's 1992 cassette release, REANIMATOR. Chilean artist Eduardo Yañez Torres and I have been friends for more than a decade. Under the name Zacarias Malden he contributed to my Connection Cassette Compilation 1 (2011), the Museum of Microcassette Art (2013), the first Cheap And Plastic (2012) compilation and the second volume (2021) as GOZNE too!

The REANIMATOR digital album consists of two files replicating the original two sides of the tape, which had seven songs each, made with samples taken from the 1985 cult sci-fi comedy horror film of the same name, Crumar DS-2 synth, Casio SK-1, and Digitech effects. Charming and funky electro with churning synth basslines and tick-tocking rhythms.
​Included in the download materials of REANIMATOR are several photos showing the original cassette cover and details from it.

Read Eduardo's articles at the EC website here.

I have known PBK since about 1990. He ran ads in some of the print issues of Electronic Cottage. I especially enjoyed his ASESINO cassette, which I consider a classic of the Cassette Culture era. You can imagine how intrigued I was when he informed me of the digital reissue of HEAT ON EARTH, a four-way collaboration with Mark Spybey, John Butcher, and Travis Johnson.

I know of John Butcher from his work in the British free improvisation scene, notably on recordings with Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Derek Bailey, and on the amazing and groundbreaking News From The Shed album (1989).

​And of course I know Floridian Travis Johnson, through his releases on the Ilse and Poverty Electronics label on Bandcamp. I still have fond memories of his highly-inventive performance at Apartment Music #8.

​There is extensive information on the artists at the Bandcamp album page.

I asked PBK to inform me and the EC readers about how the album was conceived and put together.

PBK:
I wanted to do an album with Mark Spybey, I asked him and he sent me some wonderful source material in 2013. The tracks he sent were quite rhythmic, using programmed rhythms, which I seldom work with, but some of it sort of reminded me of Can, and some of it opened up as more jazz-based. I thought about what direction I might be able to take these compositions... One of the first things I did was slow down/pitch-shift one of Mark's rhythmic tracks and make into a more ambient-sounding piece. That is the "Untitled" composition on the Bandcamp release, it's basically an outtake. I wasn't unhappy with it, but decided, instead, to use his rhythmic pieces in their original form without manipulation and add something unique to them, I didn't want the sterility of all-electronics, or all-programmed, pieces.

For a while I'd been wanting to work with an established avant garde saxophonist, the first person I asked was Ivo Perelman from Brazil, we talked on the phone and I sent him an audio file for reference, but I don't think he understood what I was aiming for and ultimately declined. 

Then I contacted John Butcher, a saxophonist from the UK who has performed/recorded with many stalwarts of the British experimental scene. He agreed to let me use any of the sound pieces on his album, "The Geometry Of Sentiment" from 2007. It's a solo album, mostly if not all soprano saxophone, with some electronic effects. His only instruction was that I use his tracks without adding any heavy effects to them, only some reverb to help incorporate into the mix.

At the time, I had also been listening to the stuff that our friend, Travis Johnson, was doing on cello. Some of it was quite extraordinary, and I asked him if he could send me some improvised sources that might work with John Butcher's saxophone solos. He came through with some superb free improvs, at least one of which was recorded outdoors in a lively nighttime setting with insects buzzing around, it was awesome.

I created the initial mixes, two tracks: "First Arc" and the title track. I sent them over to Mark and he suggested that I bring down the noise elements in that first version of "Heat On Earth". Even though I liked the noise aspect of that track, it was very propulsive, his request prompted me to re-shape it, making it less noisy but longer, using a sort-of Penderecki dramatic sound in the electronics rather than noise, and bringing out the free improv aspects more (in the last section). The interplay between Travis's cello and John's saxophone on all of these tracks was a fluke of genius. They sound like they're improvising together in real time! I added some of John's slap-tonguing sounds to the first part of the new "First Arc" and incorporated his solo sounds throughout that piece as well.

And then I worked on the longest piece: "The River That Runs To The Sea Of Stars". This one uses the recordings that Travis made in his backyard, insects buzzing around the mic, incorporated just beautifully with John's sax solos, and my turntable/synth sounds sprinkled throughout. 

Titling was easy, I had "heat on earth", a reference to solar warming, but also sort-of a metaphor for musicians working together on something, making something "hot"! Mark and I worked on the rest of the titles as poetic narratives to that "heat on earth" concept.

On Fifth Transit we are in deep into Dream Territory with keyboards, synths, samples, shortwave, guitars beaming transmissions directly to our subconscious minds. I asked Rafael González and Nik Thursday about the working methods that they employ when making an album such as Fifth Transit.

Rafael:
I use the same equipment as always (tapes, shortwave, small synths), although on Speech Index albums I use a lot of sampler keyboards. I imagine Nik uses his synths, samplers, bass, percussion...
Before starting to make an album we usually talk about it beforehand, and for my part I start to create sounds, noises, melodies or structures that go well with the idea I have of Vulcan Ironworks [their other collab project] or Speech Index or... 
I send these sounds, bases etc to Nik and we start building a track. Nik adds his music, mixes what he sent, etc. He shows me the possible result, we change it, or not...etc.
Although this approach, this way of creating tracks, is very common, if not the most common, I think the most important thing is the idea that each of us (Nik and I) has of what our album should be like, how it should sound, what it should look like.

​Nik:
On my end, I take Rafael's works and make some edits as necessary and add various bits and bobs that I've come up with that I think will work in tandem to his material. Using somewhat of a sound collage approach, I use samples from anywhere and everywhere of spoken words and noises. Sometimes I loop them, sometimes I use chopped up fragments, and they can be from anything really.. I also add layers here and there of music that I've created. Here, I mainly use vocals, keyboards, bass guitar, and drum machine. All very old school. I'm even back to using 4 track cassette at the moment. Most of my effects are old school pedal effects. A little bit of processing is done on my computer, but I try to keep that at an absolute minimum.

Bret Hart is a veteran hometaper whose earliest cassette releases date back to the 1980s, and he was interviewed in one of the original print issues of EC magazine. Bret and I recently traded download codes, and I have thoroughly enjoyed all four of my listens to The Fred Portrait Heist!

Here is how he describes the album on his Bandcamp:

​bret h hart: guitars, electronics, Ebow, objects, Risset drum
Maynard 30w hand-built tube amplifier
About ten years ago I created a large series of appx 20" x 13" mixed-media paintings on paper - each commemorating a musical maverick, in my estimation. When I could, I mailed them to the musician/composer; in some cases an intermediary passed one along.
​'Did Fred get his?', asked the profane student.
Album project realized at home during early March 2025 in North Carolina, having observed that fifty years have passed since Fred Frith began releasing his wonderful solo guitar records.
Included as bonus last track is the unedited 23m studio improvisation, warts n' all; which was subsequently sliced and diced using Audacity into eight deliberate, thematically-consistent remixes.
The performance was simultaneously videotaped via Zoom Q2HD micro-recorder.

Watch Bret Hart performing The Fred Portrait Heist on YouTube

I have known Bill Northcott of Winnipeg, Manitoba for several years now. He has participated in numerous Electronic Cottage community projects, including The No Electricity compilation, Weird Circus, Rocket in my Pocket, Daredevil Meditations, and many more! He curated one of the funniest and most successful EC projects, the PROCRASTINOISE compilation of 2023!
​
​I am always interested in the sound art that Bill produces, so when he pointed me toward his newest work, End Of Season, I grabbed a download posthaste! 

Whenever possible, and depending on whether I get a reply when I ask, I like to let artists themselves inform the EC readers, instead of me guessing at what is going on. To be honest, I have never been enthusiastic about writing reviews. I asked Bill to fill us in on the ideas, concepts, inspirations, gear, and methods behind End Of Season.

​Bill Northcott:
Right now I can tell you that I recorded it on an old Tascam 4-track cassette recorder with a microKORG, a Yamaha reface CS synth, a couple of pocket calculators (arcade and Street Fighter), a microphone going through an Ibanez Digital Delay pedal and a couple of Korg Monotron synths (delay and Duo). There’s a ukulele in there somewhere too.
​It was done in a couple of blasts of repressed anger in response to the constraints of time. It may be of my own doing, but outside forces have mutated and bastardized it.
I digitized and EQ’d it through Audacity too.
My main motivation was to simply bust out some noise. I had a vague idea of what I wanted it to sound like, and I suppose you could say I didn’t so much play the instruments so much as use them to channel the sounds you hear, sort of like a ouija board.

Tuesday At Ten by Jake Joyce and others

Tuesday at Ten is my favorite conceptual album that I purchased during the month of March. The idea is a simple one. Jake Joyce invited friends of his in Illinois, Michigan, and South Carolina to record the sounds of outdoor emergency alarm tests that occur the first Tuesday of every month at 10:00 AM.
​The 18 recordings possess a kind of minimalist conceptual unity that is at once funny, annoying, and hypnotic/meditative — a combination of field recordings, noise, and electronic music.

Abstract electronic sounds of all sorts abound on the CHEFKIRK release I purchased in March. I was pleased and surprised to discover here charming music box-like sounds, mechanistic repetitive polyrhythms that trip over and through each other and get entangled, and burbling sounds like an old coffee percolator. Despite the album title the listener will find sounds that are downright gentle and even playful by anyone's standards. We also have deep, thrumming oscillator pulses and persistent glitchifications that brought a smile to this knob-twiddler's mind. The production is clean and we can hear all of the various tendrils interweaving. There were a few moments that reminded me of Dieter Moebius.

I asked Roger Smith of CHEFKIRK if he had anything he'd like to share with the EC readers about his gear and methods used on beautiful things have to be destroyed and he replied:
​"I will tell you what you probably already know, all tracks are recorded in one-take, very minimal editing meaning that ends are just cut or faded, all electronics with knobs and switches meaning nothing is computer generated." 

Giving Up With Stockport Swimming Team
by Stockport Swimming Team

I don't know about anyone else, but I like to have fun when I'm listening to music, and Giving Up With Stockport Swimming Team fills that ticket quite nicely! Abrasive, in your face, self-deprecating, smart-alecky, pop-art satirical, LOL-hysterical, and just all over the place.

A quick glance at the song titles gives us a taste for what's in store:
​"Death Of The Last Spice Girl", "Message To Jayfive: Please Stop Removing My Discogs Submissions Of The Gerogerigegege's Art Is Over Cassette", "Kill Bill Volume 3", "Acing The Mull Of Kintyre Test (with Hallend Oats188)" and 14 others, ranging in length from 10 seconds to eight and a half minutes, with the majority being around one minute.

On the Vomit Hurdy Gurdy Rekordz label...based in North Korea (?!) … but we know better than that, don’t we?! Check out the other releases on the label --
I L-O-V-E those collage album covers!

​I'll be reporting on another Vomit Hurdy Gurdy label album in Part 2 of my March 2025 Report.

I was filled with joy to have the opportunity to perform at another Squared Wave electronic music show at 4th Avenue Food Park in Gainesville, Florida.
This time I was accompanied by my good friend Dylan Houser who traveled from Lakeland, Florida to perform at his first Squared Wave show.

Squared Wave will soon celebrate its fourth anniversary.
The series is curated by Kevin Miller, with assistance by Mark Rodriguez, and is presented by Squarehouse Pizza.

Click here to view Andrew Chadwick's YouTube playlist of 276 full-length videos of performances at Squared Wave dating back to May 12, 2021.

​Below are photos and short videos that I took at the event.
Check out my report on the February 2025 Squared Wave show HERE.

two short video clips recorded by Dylan Houser

Here below are photographs and short video clips of all of the performances. 

Screenshots from Frog's audiovisual presentation for AR244.

Frog links:
​http://vimeo.com/user3917908
http://youtube.com/user/frogforfun
http://frogforfun.bandcamp.com/

Short videos of my performance by Andrew Chadwick and Mark Rodriguez.

Hifi Envelope at Bandcamp
HifiEnvelope played at Ironing's first show in 2005!

Gnats - Casio Punk - Tampa, Florida

ISYA - St. Augustine, Florida

Severed+Said - Jacksonville, Florida

Holly Hunt at Bandcamp 

Ironing links - 
full show list: https://tinyurl.com/bdfd57ex
http://ironing.bandcamp.com
http://soundcloud.com/ironing
​http://youtube.com/ironingFL

My first purchase of the month
​was the online reissue of Do Not Write Below This Line,
a cassette by Walls Of Genius
that was originally released on my Cause And Effect label in 1985.
You can read an interview with Evan Cantor and Little Fyodor of WoG
about the album here.

A couple of years ago I first started reading about and listening to a new micro-genre called Dungeon Synth. Imagine my surprise when I found out about a new genre of underground electronic sounds called Dino Synth!
​Jurassic Park is a split album by Primal Beast and Park Ranger of minimalist lo-fi synth excursions (it sounds kind of chiptune-ish) that I find quite pleasing.

I am thrilled to have a digital copy of Mitch Rushton’s awe-inspiring masterpiece of icy majestic electronic sounds, Trans-Siberian.
Originally issued in the UK on Rushton’s own Alternate Media Tapes label,
and subsequently licensed to Chris Phinney’s Harsh Reality Music label stateside. Read Jerry Kranitz’s review at the HRM archive site.
​I still have my original cassette copy as issued by HRM!

The Madrid-based duo 500 Goats, Andalusian sound artists Juan Cepas and José Mª Pérez-Flor, are new to me. I enjoyed listening to their album titled Getting Along, which is a playful, chaotic, and exploratory mix of kalimba, electronics, and field recordings.

I recently made contact with Wolfgang Reffert and he sent me a short history of his long-time project, Dark Star:
In the early 1990s German music project Dark Star gained some recognition in the independent cassette and DIY scene in Europe and the US with three cassette releases, and later CDs on the Strange Ways label. Wolf and I traded free download codes.
For fans & enthusiasts of dramatic electronic sounds, these recordings were all made in 1994 to 1997, and they are getting a new life here on Artefacts.
One track has vocals by Edward Ka-Spel.

Pedja Kovačević sent me a free download code for Soundologia Anthology – Volume 1 – South Florida Contemporary Composers & Sound Artists. All of the artists on this tastefully-presented collection were new to me. The download comes with a gorgeous 24-page PDF with artists' bios and compositional notes, as well as a half-minute video teaser.
​I suggest that you dive right in and start by streaming the tracks, and downloads are $8.
​More info at the Soundologia website.

I purchased a download of True Giants, the newest release by the duo of Anguished Khan — Chris Phinney of Mental Anguish and La Rowan Khan (Adam Naworal).
This is the follow-up to 2023’s Music For Detrimental Robots and Music For Integrative Robots, plus a couple of EPs.
​While listening to these adventurous sounds I had great fun reading about the mythical giants that the tracks are named after.

I have been in contact with Charles Rice Goff III since the late 1980s.
​I have an extensive collection of his cassette releases.
Here's a photo of my Goff cassette collection, plus a few by Dave Fuglewicz.

Charlie is one of the most consistently- and wildly-inventive cohorts of mine from those days, and no history of Cassette Culture could possibly be complete without details of his audio art output. CIII is as prolific as ever and still amazes me with his creativity and wit! So it was with great joy that I learned a few weeks ago that he was planning a release for Chris Phinney's Harsh Reality Music label on Bandcamp. Advice to the listener: don't take my words for it... Dive right in and immerse yourself in Opposed Thumbs by clicking on that PLAY button below.

I was happy to have the opportunity to see Columbus, Ohio-based noise saxophonist bobb hatt perform at Action Research #243 here in Gainesville, Florida on February 2, 2025. Anybody who has seen him live knows that his performances are highly-energetic! He uses the entire performance space!

   At AR243 I bought a cassette copy of his new album, Fones. You can stream and download it, plus buy the cassette at the Dour Records Bandcamp site, and the digital album is also available from bobb's Bandcamp page.

   If I had to pick one album that I purchased on Bandcamp in February that I feel like I enjoyed more than any other, it would be Free Person by Cool Person. Cool Person is one of the many names that Josh Tippery of Gainesville, Florida uses for his music projects, and the emphasis here like all of the other Cool Person albums is on what he calls "Yamaha synth-jazz melodies from the other side of the house." I'm a big fan of music made with consumer keyboards, also known as "tablehooters", and the songs here range from mellow to weird, and always fun.
​   Cool Person music reminds me of many of the recordings that I made with Brian Noring of ye olde F.D.R. Tapes back in the 90s. Back in 2013 Josh and I recorded an album of Casio and Yamaha keyboard improvisations titled The Morning Crew.

   A lot of us still love cassettes! They are like little machines themselves, with parts that move, and people with technical knowhow can modify them to play in ways not originally intended (loops, etc.). Cassettes are no longer just for listening.
   Tampa Bay area noise artist Zachary Short (black beast of arrrghhh) has created an arsenal of instruments repurposed from cassette players called Cassettones. Interested readers can find numerous tutorials on the Internet for making their own Cassettones. It seems to me that Cassettones are similar to the Mellotron and Orchestron.

The Other Hal told me a little bit about the Cassettones:
"The Cassettone is basically a cassette Walkman mounted on a wooden base. The base has five buttons and accompanying knobs. The knobs can be turned to speed up or slow down the speed of the cassette player. You could just use one button and just turn the button linked to that knob to change cassette speed to your heart's content. Having five buttons and knobs allow you to to set each at a fixed speed and use them cut-up style.​"

German band Can need no introduction, as they are well-known for their pioneering albums of the 1960s and 70s, mixing together elements as disparate as The Velvet Underground, Free Improvisation, Beat Poetry, and avant-garde experimentalism by way of Stockhausen and Cage. You can find their entire back catalog plus newly-published archival live recordings on the Can Bandcamp site.

On their album Can The Can Park and Hanrath used no sounds by Can and each track on the album is original. The groove really kicks in on the second track, "Future Days In Future Light", with a deep, thrumming bass riff, insistent polyrhythms, and spluttery electronics. The album includes contributions by Deborah Fialkiewicz, Language Of The Moon, and Soli.d 

Thomas and Wilfried each have published their own mix of the album.
You can listen to and download Hanrath's here.
Interestingly, on Park's version he has included a seven-minute recording of him talking to us, explaining the inspirations, ideas, and concepts behind the album...

Thomas also published a video of the talk on YouTube.

   I have been in contact with German audio artist Peter Schubert for a few years now. His auvikogue project participated in the Personal Business business-card CD-R project that I curated a few years ago.
   Over the past few months Peter and I have been working on a collaboration that will be a future release of his edici​ó​n gxggxxg project, which consists of auvikogue working with partners to create signed and numbered editions of 10 artworks and mini CD-Rs in art-envelopes. On his auvikogue Bandcamp site you can find Peter's previous collaborations in the series, with Rafael González, Pedro Bericat, Jürgen O. Olbrich, and Daniele Virgilio. Peter has generously shared download codes of these audio albums, which include PDFs of the materials that came with each release.
   Peter recently sent me a download code of Klangglomerat by auvikogue on the Klanggold label of Munich.

On March 3, 2025 Peter published our album. Check it out here:

The newest MANDOM album, The Killer Smiles, was issued on February 24th by the Falt label, France. Click that PLAY button above and start listening!
In the future I need to spend more time exploring the Falt label, which used to be a tape label from 2016-2024, but is now solely a digital network with 179 Bandcamp releases!

I had about $10 saved up in my PayPal account from sales of downloads of my Bandcamp albums and I invested it in purchasing a download of the multimedia edition of Issue #79 of Audion for the specific purpose of reading Adam Naworal's review column, Another World Of Sound. As many of you know, Audion magazine has been around since the 1980s and covers Space Rock, Krautrock, and other "out" musics.

​You can read all of Adam Naworal's articles at the Electronic Cottage website here. 

Here is my newest release on Bandcamp, which I hope you will enjoy, a collaboration with William A. Davison of Toronto titled Automated Interchange Pileup.
It is available for download for a minimum of $1, and the download includes JPEGs and PDFs of the CD cover and extensive liner notes.
​I will trade download codes with you!

And last, I want to remind you of Satanic Sinkholes and Squared Waves in Flooded Bedrooms, a recent release by Vasectomy Party (Hal Harmon) and me from a few months ago, containing our solo live recordings from a Squared Wave show in September plus two collaborative tracks recorded in my apartment. You can stream & download it via the Bandcamp player below, plus there are still CD-R copies available.
You can read Harmon's articles at the EC website here.