Here is a special slideshow of EC Community members
​wearing their Electronic Cottage badges!
In the slideshow above click on each person's photo
to visit their personal contributor page here at EC.
​
These badges were created by Jeremiah Paddock,
based on a design by Mike Nobody.

Email to me a high resolution photo of yourself wearing your EC badge
and I will add your photo to the slideshow.
In the first photo Rafael González sports his EC badge,
which he just received 6 October.

I mailed 16 badges to Rafael and he will mail the badges
to all of the European members of the EC Community at his own expense.

​I have already mailed EC badges to
​almost all of the USA members of the community,
and next I will mail badges to our members in Canada, South America, and Asia.

In an ongoing effort to make my art and my life as close together as possible, like always, during the month of October 2018 I carried with me at all times in my pocket one of four Sony ICD-PX470 stereo digital dictaphones and recorded sounds of my day to day life.

I recorded sounds while walking my dog Stanley (including our encounters with human neighbors, squirrels, crows, and other dogs; airplanes and helicopters overhead, automobile traffic including emergency vehicles), miscellaneous sounds from my job, restaurants, grocery stores. I also recorded spontaneous and random thoughts, reflections on and readings from books and articles, plus emails I had sent to Leslie Singer. I also recorded interactions with family members.

I held two Apartment Music shows during the month of October, and I recorded sounds before and after the shows, as well as in-between the performances. On October 25th two of my nephews arrived for an 8-day stay with my brother Mark, Stanley and I. During those days we spent a lot of time at my mom and dad's house, because Mark and his sons were busy constructing the yearly McGee Halloween Extravaganza. Mark transforms my parents' yard into a haunted graveyard. This year's theme was Freak Show. Lumen K joined the project as a participant, playing the part of a fortune teller. I made numerous recordings on Halloween night, which included the sounds of Halloween trick or treaters getting the bejezus scared out of them! Plus Lumen and I played iPhone synth and voice-changing apps through belt-clip amplifiers. Costumed in a black cloak with a hood I played the Korg Monotron Delay battery-operated analog synth and helped create a spooky ambience to the Freak Show.

Early on the morning of November 1st I connected the four dictaphones to a Behringer mixer and set all four on continuous playback, the mix of which I captured in a direct transcription as the event unfolded. All of the recordings that I had made during the month of October assembled themselves into simultaneously juxtaposed layered constructions that I hope would make Richard Hülsenbeck proud. I started out with no preconceived ideas, no story I wanted to tell. Letting the assemblage happen IS the story you hear here. Afterwards I divided the 75-minute assemblage into six parts for the listener's convenience to give them access points, and slapped the six parts upside the head with titles.

Most artists with any amount of good sense ALWAYS maintain a cultish MYSTERY about how they create their art. It would be anathema to many people I know to describe in this much detail how they did what they did to make their artistic creations. With me it's different. The mystery comes not from me withholding info on how I did what I did to get these results, but from your perceptions as a listener as you listen to the assemblage reveal itself to you. You create it as you listen. It is my greatest wish that these assemblages will bring you lots of amusement, happiness and fun as you experience the month of October along with me. Art like life, lifelike art.

Apartment Music #31 was held Saturday, October 20, 2018.
Apartment music is a long-running series of live sessions of experimental, electronic and improvised music and noise in Hal McGee's apartment in Gainesville, Florida, USA.

things evolve in swamps

Sunday, October 7, 2018

This Apartment Music show featured performances
​by members of the Electronic Cottage Community
who live in Florida.

The performers were invited to interpret the theme
​"things evolve in swamps".

Apartment Music is a long-running series of concerts of improvisation, experimental and electronic music and Noise at Hal McGee's apartment in Gainesville, Florida. 

All Electronic Cottage Community members — people with Personal Contributor Pages — can request by email a free download code for the album

Mister McGee's neighborhood

1. lovebugs and cowlicks
2. dead bodies cast shadows
3. I am well-traveled in my neighborhood
4. the future of assemblage starts with you

simultaneist dictaphone assemblages
everyday sounds and electronics
audio folk art
featuring Lumen K and Stanley

also available on CDR for $8 postage paid worldwide
by request

recorded September 2018
with four Sony ICD PX-470 stereo digital dictaphones
in Gainesville, Florida

Hal McGee
with Lumen K
on
Korg minilogue
Yamaha Reface CS
Novation Circuit Mono Station
synthesizers
with Moog Theremin

plus Hal on
Moog Filtatron
Moog Model D
Animoog
and Noisemusick
iPhone app synths
played through a JBL Clip 3
belt-clip Bluetooth speaker

Stanley 
improvised performances on Babble Ball
and voice of course

album cover photo by my mom, JoAn McGee

Seven years ago I recorded my album Nature Guy, while in Key West, Florida celebrating the wedding of my sister, Terri, and Einar Myklebust

Two 31-minute cassette tape noise collages of field recordings from Key West, Florida, September 30-October 2, 2011. Most of these recordings were made on Duval Street. I carried with me two identical Sony TCM-150 cassette recorders, one in either pocket of my cargo pants. I would pull one out, record certain sounds in my surroundings, put it back and pull out the other recorder and record new sounds, over and over. Sometimes I would pull out both recorders and record at the same time, with slight variations. Later, I mixed the two tapes together in an arbitrary purposely haphazard manner. 

As I was recording the raw source materials I was struck by the feeling that in that hyper-detailed, over-the-top, too-much-information environment of Key West (which is as far out on the edge of the USA as possible) I was in a sense immersed or swimming in everything that is good and bad and exciting and boring about living in a mixed market Capitalist society that is teetering and tottering, collapsing and yet bursting forth... 

During the same weekend I also recorded my half of a split album with Bryan Lewis Saunders, "At this spot on October 2, 2011, nothing happened". Recorded on a handheld cassette recorder during a one hour continuous walk in Key West, Florida, on Sunday morning, October 2, 2011. A prime example of a recording in which "nothing happens".

Hal McGee
between coincidence and augury

1. flight patterns of birds 25:33
2. signs of things that happened 25:49

recorded August 2018 in Gainesville, Florida 
with three Sony ICD-PX470 stereo digital dictaphones 
Yamaha Reface CS and Korg Monotron synthesizers
Minimoog Model D and Noisemusick iPhone apps 
plus circuit bent Casio SK1 and sounds of every day life 

artwork details 
from Custer's Last Stand 
1967

download at Bandcamp ($1 minimum)
includes PDF of CD cover so that you can print your own CD cover

also available on CDR by request, for $8 postage paid worldwide

Collaboration is one of the Pillars of DIY Homemade Experimental Music!

​Most of my collaborations in recent years have been conducted via postal mail -- such as the soon-to-be published dictaphone assemblage album titled microcassettera, with long-time collab partner Chris Phinney. But nothing beats collaborating in person! Phinney and I collaborated in person on numerous occasions. One of my other favorite collaborators is Brian Noring.

​Brian used to operate the F.D.R. Tapes label in the 1990s, and I visited him on numerous occasions in his hometown of Des Moines, Iowa. Brian and I have collaborated on more than 25 albums.

For your listening pleasure, here is "dada beat hippie noise punk raveup, an improvisation-based collab track in two parts from an album called Studies in Sound Archaeology, originally recorded in October 2001.

EC Add-And-Pass Project #1
Public Distribution Add-And-Pass
These EC Community members have signed up for this project:
Penny Grune-Fae (already sent to Penny)
W.A.Davison (already sent to William)
Ken Montgomery (mailed to Ken on August 25th)
Mike Nobody
Phillip Klampe
Dylan Houser
Crank Sturgeon
Rafael González
Frank

​1.
I will mail a 60-minute cassette with a maximum of five minutes of my sounds recorded on the beginning of the first side of the tape to an Electronic Cottage Community member who wants to participate in the project.

2.
That EC Community member will record a maximum of five minutes of their sounds on the cassette after my recording, and then they will mail the cassette to a friend who will like to participate. They can mail the cassette to anyone.

3.
The third person on the cassette does not need to be a member of the Electronic Cottage Community. After me and the first EC Community member, anybody can participate, regardless of whether they are a member of the EC Community or not.

When the cassette is full the twelfth participant will mail the cassette back to me. I will make copies of the completed cassette and will send copies to all of the participants, and the tape will be probably be published online on Bandcamp.

Each cassette will be accompanied by an information sheet on which the participants will enter their artist name, recording title, and their contact address.

If you are an Electronic Cottage Community member, and you want to be an initial recipient of an EC Add-And-Pass cassette, please contact me by email with the words "EC ADD-AND-PASS PROJECT #1" in the title of the email..

Please understand that you should be willing to pay necessary postage costs, which could possibly be high.

At the bottom of this page you can see examples of what the cassette j-card and information sheets will look like.

​There is a great likelihood that most of these cassettes will never be returned to me. Danger! Excitement! Chance and happenstance! Who knows what will happen?! Just think of how exciting it will be if one or more of these cassettes will be completed and returned to me!

More importantly, it will be a fun and unique way to promote Electronic Cottage, and to pay homage to Mail Art and the Add-And-Pass Cassette tradition of the 1980s.

/////

Alternatives are available!

EC Community members can choose to participate in one, two, or all three of the projects.


ALTERNATIVE #1
If the above project plan seems to you to be too chaotic and prone to failure (and you think of that as a problem), you can participate in the...
EC ADD-AND-PASS
CASSETTE PROJECT #2
(EC Community members only)

These EC Community members have signed up for this project:
Hal McGee
Rafael González
W.A.Davison
John M. Bennett
Mike Nobody
Phillip Klampe
Penny Grune-Fae
Dylan Houser
Shatter Wax
Michael Ridge
Crank Sturgeon
Tomokie's Cup
- We now have 12 people signed up for this project!
- If we can get a total of 18 people we will make a 90-minute cassette instead of a C60! We can accept six more people.

It is the same basic idea and procedure, except that only members of the EC Community will participate in the add-and-pass cassette. The community members who choose to participate can coordinate their efforts to make sure that the cassette is completed. This will create new connections between the members, and help to establish trust and cooperation.

If you would like to participate in EC ADD-AND-PASS PROJECT #2, please send an email to me with the words "EC ADD-AND-PASS PROJECT #2" in the title of the email.

This project requires commitments from at least 12 EC community members before the project will begin, with a maximum of 18 members. I will choose the order of the participants on the tape. This order will be determined largely by the order in which members sign up for the project.

/////


ALTERNATIVE #2
If neither of the above projects appeal to you, perhaps because you do not own a cassette recorder or you cannot afford the high postage cost to mail cassettes, or you live in a place where postal mail service is unreliable, you can participate in the...

​EC AUDIO EXQUISITE CORPSE
​(EC Community members only) 
to be conducted via email

These EC Community members have signed up for this project:
Hal McGee
​Penny Grune-Fae
W.A.Davison
Lord Litter
Frank
{AN} EeL
Mike Nobody
Phillip Klampe
Francesco Aprile
Osvaldo Cibils
Seiei Jack
Dave Fuglewicz
Shatter Wax
David Nadeau
Leslie Singer
Crank Sturgeon
more participants are welcome!

If you are not familiar with the Exquisite Corpse technique
Wikipedia has an extensive article on the topic

I will record a maximum of five minutes of my sounds.
I will then send a sound sample of the last/final 15 seconds of my recording to the next participant who will react to what they hear and they will record a maximum of five minutes.
They will send their recording to me and I will then send a sound sample of the last/final 15 seconds of their recording to the next participant who will react to what they hear and they will record a maximum of five minutes. And so on and so forth until a maximum of 75 minutes is reached.

At the end, when it is completed, we will have a big continuous 75-minute piece with many surprises and unexpected events.

If you would like to participate in EC AUDIO EXQUISITE CORPSE, please send an email to me with the words "EC AUDIO EXQUISITE CORPSE" in the title of the email.

This project requires commitments from at least 12 EC community members before the project will begin. I will choose the order of the participants in the Exquisite Corpse. This order will be determined largely by the order in which members sign up for the project.