SQUARED WAVE at 4th Ave Food Park electronic music show open aux February 12, 2025 Gainesville, Florida photographs and short video clips by Hal McGee SQUARED WAVE is a monthly series of "open aux" electronic music events the second Wednesday of every month at 4th Ave Food Park in Gainesville, Florida. Presented by Squarehouse Pizza. SQUARED WAVE is organized and curated by electronic musician Kevin Miller with assistance from Mark Rodriguez, owner of Squarehouse Pizza, also an electronic audio artist. When I asked Kevin about the origins of SQUARED WAVE he told me: "Mark is responsible for the idea! Early into me working for him at Squarehouse (then Satch Squared) he asked if I’d like to help do an electronic night based loosely on the Synth Battle events that happen at Gramps in Miami. That was 4 years ago now and we’ll be celebrating 4 years of Squared Wave this April.” 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. Visual projections by Mysty MAL FUNC Kevin Miller (Mal Func) shows us his handcrafted synthesizer. ASHER OHM LANDFORMS HAL MCGEE video clips by Andrew Chadwick and Ben Keselowsky DAYDREAM KEY TIDES EUGLOSSINE LE CRINGE DRUJHN
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Hello Friends!
Welcome back to the newly-revived Electronic Cottage website! The EC site has been dormant for the last three to four years, but I have kept on paying the fees to keep it alive. You can enjoy this old school blog-based website without the distractions and toxicity of social media. On EC you will find no pernicious algorithms, no AI, no politics, no blinking GIFs and winking widgets, no avatars, no memes, no emojis, no advertisements! For my first new post on the EC website I am going to post links to the 17 albums by my friends that I downloaded from Bandcamp in the month of January 2025, plus a couple by me and collaborators. Rather than attempt to write reviews of audio artworks by peers, comrades, and dear friends, I have chosen to post below Bandcamp audio players so that you can experience the sounds firsthand without interpretations by me that might color your perception of the sounds.
I still love music and audio art on hard media, especially CD-Rs and CDs, but I like cassettes too.
In many of the same ways that cassettes in the 1980s and 1990s used to be the most affordable and accessible means to reach listeners, online music on Bandcamp is now the way to go. Anyone anywhere on Planet Earth with an Internet connection can stream hours and hours of music for free instantaneously, without the frightful, hideous postage costs to mail cassettes over national borders. Streaming on Bandcamp, like you will do below, is a good way to get a taste, but to really savor the full richness of the music we really need to download the albums we are interested in. When I download albums from Bandcamp I always choose WAV files for optimum sound quality.
In its own way Bandcamp is something of a digital utopia, an island in a vast Internet garbage-strewn ocean. Sure, it is a corporate profit-making venture, but despite two ownership changes Bandcamp has remained true to its original mission of putting artists first:
"Bandcamp believes that music is an indispensable part of culture, and for that culture to thrive, artists must be compensated fairly and transparently for their work." When a fan purchases a download, Bandcamp takes 15%, and PayPal gets a fee. When I get a download sale I usually end up with about $0.73 out of every dollar, which I consider quite good. You can read about Bandcamp's Fair Trade Music Policy here: bandcamp.com/fair_trade_music_policy Why don't I offer my stuff on the Internet Archive for free? Quite simply because I think that the Internet Archive is butt ugly, even fugly. Enough said about that, except that I have nothing seriously against archive.org, and I think it is useful for certain things. You can find many items by me, compilations and such, on The Internet Archive. Some of these albums I downloaded because a friend sent me a free download code for the album. Most of these albums I purchased. I want to urge all of you who have Bandcamp sites to consider making all of your albums available for a $1 minimum with the option to pay more if the purchaser desires. I will be willing to pay one or two bucks to support the releases of a friend and a peer. I will not pay more than that. Most of my Bandcamp releases are Buy It now with a $1 minimum. Some are $2. In my opinion putting your albums as a Free Download is not a good thing, because I cannot add them to my Bandcamp Collection. When I purchase a download by a friend it goes into my Bandcamp Collection, and this helps to promote the releases by my friends. Other people on Bandcamp can follow my Bandcamp Fan Collection, and learn about the cool stuff I purchase. For additional information on Bandcamp Fan Collections, go here. Here below are the Bandcamp albums by friends that I enjoyed in January 2025, in the order I downloaded them. If I was forced at gunpoint to pick my favorite, I would choose Brigid Oxhorn CDX3 (Unmastered Originals). At the very bottom I will list two albums that I issued on my Bandcamp site in January — collaborations with Dylan Houser and Brandstifter.
Electronic Cottage Compilation 7
Forgotten Memories Of A Harsh Future a tribute to the Harsh Reality Music label 01. Pendro — Nerve-Storm 02. homogenized terrestrials — sneaking through a fairy’s garden 03. Dave Fuglewicz — A Harsh Future 04. Craig Tanis — Crimes Against Humanity 05. Swami Loopynanda — With Which You Were Not Born With 06. Girls On Fire — The Ballad of Psychodrama 07. Fiver's Stereo — Logged Future 08. Headcleaner — hey baby wake up from your asleep 09. Hal McGee — The Future Sounds Bent 10. Koobaatoo Asparagus — Do The Freakco 11. Rafael Flores — Redrem 3 Birthday 12. Al Margolis — glock and spiel 13. Mental Anguish — The If Factor 14. Igor Amokian — Contact 12 15. Aversion To Reality — Invisible Menagerie 16. Formaldehydra — The Bog 17. brunk — soften the blow 18. Jeff Central — Aluminum Dreams 19. Penga — The Bells of Time (Prepare for Death) 20. Lumen K — Lyre Like Nero 21. benten — hebi koroshi 22. Michael Thomas Jackson — 142S.W.S.Rd 23. PPFPESSco — Fasten-Up for the Apocalypse 24. M.NOMIZED — Mother Nature 25. Mini-Mutations — Serious About The Future 26. KR Seward — Galond 27. {AN} EeL — Amnesiatic in the Attic 28. Panicsville — Circuscision 29. will sōderberg… — sehnsucht 30. Gabrielleschi — Lost Museum of Novelty 31. Rafael González — I will see you in Luxor 32. DJ Hollow Life — harsh toys 33. Mystery Hearsay — Keeping It Real - Keeping It Harsh 34. Magic Bullet — The Cool Chris Phinney Theme curated and produced by Chris Phinney and Hal McGee Visit the Harsh Reality Music label at Bandcamp harshrealitymusic.bandcamp.com/music Visit the Harsh Reality Music historical archive site www.haltapes.com/harsh-reality-music.html
now available at YouTube — Sounds and Looks Like Life, The Director's Cut is the third and definitive version or iteration of SaLLL — https://youtu.be/j10VA1OdBI0
Shorter and more briskly-paced than the original and photos & videos-only versions, and it features a completely new, less-cluttered audio mix. An Electronic Cottage Project. THERE IS AN OPTION FOR HIGH DEFINITION PLAYBACK. BE SURE TO SELECT IT! An international community video photographic audio assemblage project consisting of sights and sounds of daily life recorded during the month of June 2020. Sounds and Looks Like Life project participants are: {AN} EeL (Canada), Aaron Abrams, Al Margolis, Andrew Dalio, Anton Mobin (France), Austin Rich, Bert Vanden Berghe (The Netherlands), Bill Northcott (Canada), Bret Hart, Charles Rice Goff III, Charlie Kramer, Chris Phinney, Colette Parisa, Crank Sturgeon, D. Petri, David Nadeau (Canada), Dylan Houser, Francesco Aprile (Italy), Hal Harmon, Hal McGee, Harold Schellinx (France), Jay Peele, Jeremiah Paddock, Joey Patrickt, Jonas Juuso (Sweden), Juan Angel Italiano (Uruguay), Judith Pauly-Bender (Germany), Justin Moore, K.R. Seward, Leslie Singer, Lezet (Serbia), Lumen K, Maozifan (Taiwan), Max Eastman, Michael Ridge (England), Mike Cosma, Neda Mehrjoo (Iran), Niniji Chen (Taiwan), osvaldo cibils (Spain), Patrizio Pica (Italy), Phillip Klampe, Rafael González (Spain), Seiei Jack (Japan), Tim Jones (Wales), Will Soderberg. No country stated = USA. Conceived, produced, directed, stipulated, assembled and constructed by Hal McGee, employing random chance and automatistic procedures.
This audio album at Bandcamp is the soundtrack of The Director's Cut of Sounds and Looks Like Life, above. I will mail CDR copies of the audio album to all project participants.
View the original Sounds and Looks Like Life movie --
youtu.be/ZRJSVdJ9noc There is a second version of the SaLLL movie, which consists solely of the photos and video clips that were contributed without the contributed audio files -- youtu.be/IT92xwde01w The original Sounds and Looks Like Life project page, including project guidelines and stipulations, can be found here: www.electroniccottage.org/hal-mcgee/sounds-and-looks-like-life
Hal McGee
May 2020 Report 1. Putrefaction Rot Decay Mold 2. Buy One Get One Interpretation 3. The Personal is the Political 4. Pickled Cured and Stuffed May 2020 Report is a 65-minute assemblage of sounds from my daily life in Gainesville, Florida during the Coronavirus Era. — with contributions by Leslie Singer, Stanley, Rafael González, Lumen K, Dylan Houser, Mark McGee (drum sounds), and other friends. The assemblage is split into four sections, and it includes spoken words, me playing the KQ Unotone iPhone synthesizer and 2-string pink dumpster guitar, family members, neighbors, co-workers, grocery store employees, rainstorms, birds, dogs, helicopters, airplanes, traffic sounds, etc. I used four Sony ICD-PX470 stereo digital dictaphones to make these recordings, and you will hear the sounds I recorded with them mixed by random chance procedures in an audio assemblage along with sounds from the video clips from the May 2020 movie, which you can view here —
ELECTRONIC COTTAGE COMPILATION 6: Rubber Stamp Sound
is now available online at Bandcamp and on double CD-R. Listen and purchase downloads and CD-Rs here — https://halmcgee.bandcamp.com/album/electronic-cottage-compilation-6-rubber-stamp-sound Contributors will receive two free download codes and one free double-CDR. It will take several days and weeks to dispense these codes and discs, so until then please enjoy the compilation in free streaming audio.
ELECTRONIC COTTAGE COMPILATION 6:
RUBBER STAMP SOUND DISC 1 01. Dylan Houser — Dylan Houser 02. KR Seward — Day Labored 03. Jonas Van den Bossche — Time Fits Me In Large Numbers 04. Aversion To Reality — Killed and Resurrected 05. John M. Bennett — Having Been Named 1 and 3 06. Hal McGee — Your Name is Hal McGee 07. If, Bwana — Rubber Sole #6 08. Koobaatoo Asparagus — I use to Live in Corona 09. Girls On Fire -- Johnny Cash Outlived The Beatles, Dylan Outlived Bowie 10. Adam Naworal — Rain Raga 11. AimsterSkitz0rz — Dorian Grayz 12. osvaldo cibils — osvaldo cibils pausa rec 13. Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt — Art of the Working Class 14. Penga — Stipulations 15. Rafael González — Sacred land, guide my way 16. Will Soderberg — magnetic journey along parallel rivers 17. Fiver's Stereo — Who The Fuck Knows 18. Shaun Robert — Splayed Initiation 19. Mike Cosma — 147Dreamstate 20. Colette Parisa — Walking Down Your Street 21. Lumen K — Earthworms 22. Mental Anguish — Vapor 23. Zeffon — Manipura 13 DISC 2 01. Dan Jackson — MIA MIO 02. Craig Tanis — ecc6 03. Juan Angel Italiano — Self-Referring Poem 04. Niniji — Circa 1981 05. Tetsuya the Lo-Fi Man — Bangerz Nite Tonite 06. Michael Thomas Jackson — For Ann Again 07. homogenized terrestrials — Level 1 Voice Extraction 08. Greathumour — Process Of Eunuch 09. Jeff Central — Bill's Secret Transmission 10. Jen Sandwich — Maybe this will help 11. Passive Cable Theory — Yes/No 12. Zebra Mu — Suburbans Tromped 13. C. Goff III — Reuben Ranzo 14. {AN} EeL — Sans Title 15. Gen Ken — I Love Rubber Stamps! 16. Tree — Black Hawk 17. NorthWoods — Basement floor 18. Vasectomy Party — World Without Language 19. Judith Pauly-Bender — A Life 20. Mr. Ebu — Schries 21. Earth Machine — 33713 22. Scott Bazar — Egg Tooth Portraits ECC6 was conceived, compiled, and produced by Hal McGee. Electronic Cottage Compilation 6: Rubber Stamp Sound was originally released on cassette in an edition of 90 copies in October 2019, and consisted of recordings by 45 members of the Electronic Cottage community. Contributors submitted recordings of two minutes or less on a standard audio cassette, and spoke their names and locations at the beginning of their recordings. Cassette compilation covers were rubber stamped in black ink on plain white card stock with the title and theme, and the cassette labels were handprinted. No other texts were given with the original cassette version. The original cassette copies were duplicated and rubber stamped at home. Each of the 45 contributors received two complimentary copies of the tape compilation, and each copy was unique due to the nature of rubber stamps and analog duplication. The character of these recordings is primitive and lo-fi, very direct and personal. Electronic Cottage movie and audio assemblage project
Hello Friends, I am inviting you to participate in the Sounds and Looks Like Life Electronic Cottage Project Please read all seven pages of guidelines and stipulations below. You would not want it any other way, would you?! The project will begin on Monday, June 1, 2020 and will end on Tuesday, June 30, 2020. Starting on June 1st and throughout the month of June, until June 30th, I want you to upload photographs, short audio files, and short video files. At the end of the month I will create a YouTube collage movie and an audio album on Bandcamp. If you want to participate, please email me and I will send links to your own personal upload folders on Google Drive. All correspondence related to this project MUST be done via email — not Facebook Messenger, text messaging, telephone, etc. Please upload files within 24 hours of creating them. At the end of the month I will use all of the photos, videos, and audio recordings by all of the participants to create a collage-style hybrid slideshow and video movie with an audio assemblage soundtrack. Random chance processes will be used to create the movie and soundtrack. The soundtrack of the movie will be published on Bandcamp with a $1 minimum download price. Each participant will receive two CDR copies and five free download codes of the audio assemblage album. The video will be available on YouTube for free viewing. Try to use portable battery-operated devices to make your photos, videos, and audio recordings. I prefer it that way! Try to use recorders and cameras that you can fit into your pocket: smartphones, cellphones, digital dictaphones, walkman recorders, cassette recorders, and small video recorders. You can upload as many photos and videos as you want, within reason. Be discreet and respectful and don’t overload the project with your own material. Photographs should be of the highest resolution possible. I can accept short videos in many different formats. If you are not sure whether your video files will work properly, send me a brief test video before the project starts. Videos must be no longer than 30 seconds (one-half minute). You can upload as many audio recordings as you want, within reason. Be discreet and respectful and don’t overload the project with your own material. Audio recordings should be no longer than 30 seconds (one-half minute), and all files must be stereo and WAV format. Basic suggested minimums Bit rate: 1411 kbps Sample size: 16 bits Sample rate: 44.100 kHz Your audio recordings should be raw, simple, un-mixed, and un-cooked. In other words, do not add effects to your audio recordings before you upload them. Please understand that your recordings will be randomly mixed with three other layers of sounds, so be sure to leave spaces in your sounds for other sounds to interact with yours. Don’t brickwall your audio sound levels. Think minimalism! There are no minimum requirements for how many audio recordings, photos, and videos you can contribute: as few as you wish or have time for. You can, however, contribute as many recordings and photos as you want, while keeping in mind the collaborative nature of the project: leave space and room for the other participants! Please avoid copyright infringement. Do not upload materials that are copyrighted by other people. Please generate and record materials of your own making. Make back-ups and save copies of all of your contributed files until after the project is completed. Please note that this is NOT a noise work, nor is it an electronic music work per se. The movie and audio assemblage might contain noisy and electronic elements, but generally you should think of them as being dada- and fluxus-inspired multi-layered collages of sights and sounds from day to day life. Overly-harsh, obnoxiously-loud sounds will be rejected. Racket is fine, but keep it short, keep it fun and lively, and try not to make your stuff too loud so that other sounds in the assemblage can be heard. The emphasis in your photographs, videos, and audio recordings should be on the sights and sounds of your daily life during the month of June: spoken words, diary entries, recollections of dreams, conversations, short bits of poetry and word cut-ups, household and home, eating and drinking, appliances and machines and tools, sights and sounds while you take a walk in your neighborhood, the sights and sounds of pets and other animals, public transportation, domestic and wild flora, emergency and police vehicles, airplanes and helicopters, neighbors, construction sights and sounds, traffic, children playing, public address systems, shops and stores and restaurants and marketplaces, decay and rot, buildings, street musicians, your workplace, short instrumental improvisations (acoustic or electric), sounds of pocket synthesizers and toys and gadgets and computers and circuit bent gear, etc. Think minimalism, raw, handheld, portable, pocket-sized, battery-operated, collage, rubber stamp, abstract expressionism. Daily life brings with it all kinds of thoughts, emotions, and feelings, and you are welcome to share your experiences in this assemblage project. I will say that the emphasis of this project is on the simple joys of daily life, as the name of the project suggests. Life is already full of enough pain and negativity without us adding to the burden. I prefer that this project will increase the world’s happiness with joy, mirth, whimsy, silliness, humor, comedy, jokes, craziness. Approach this project with relaxed enthusiasm and with the simple joy and awe of a child instead of the weariness and impatience of an adult. I will not accept files via email or WeTransfer or any other upload service. You must use the Folders that I will assign to you on Google Drive. Please note that this is a EC Group multi-collaborative community project. Your name will be listed as one of the project participants in the YouTube movie, Bandcamp album info, and on the CDR cover, but the movie and album will be credited to “Electronic Cottage”. The movie and audio assemblages will be continuous pieces with the various photos, videos, and audio recordings presented in a continuous “stream of consciousness” style. Your individual and specific contributions will not be identified. If possible, try to resist the temptation to make posts or comments online about the project while it is in progress. I reserve the right as project coordinator to reject any contributed materials for whatever reasons. Have fun, and if you have any questions and need further clarification do not hesitate to contact me by email: [email protected] If you want to get a feeling for what to expect of the end results of the project, please view a few minutes of my most recent movie on YouTube March 2020 Report is a 61-minute collage slideshow movie consisting of 1,371 photograph still shots and short video clips with a multi-layered dictaphone assemblage soundtrack documenting my daily life in Gainesville, Florida. Watch it here — https://youtu.be/5RfL2VENNlI Stream and download the audio album here — https://halmcgee.bandcamp.com/album/march-2020-report Featuring and with voices, images, contributions and inspirations (knowing and unknowing) by Stanley The Paperanian, Lumen K, Leslie Singer, Rafael González, family members and co-workers, neighbors, grocery store employees, and fellow passengers on public transportation. Gelatinous Goo is a 17-minute personal diary slideshow movie with dictaphone assemblage soundtrack by Hal McGee. Recorded January 10-23, 2020, in Gainesville, Florida. Featuring Stanley and Lumen K. Audio photographic folk art. High Definition picture and sound. The movie consists of 1,001 iPhone photos paired with dictaphone recordings of four Sony ICD PX-470 stereo digital dictaphones. I play Monotron synthesizers on the soundtrack, plus you will hear me interacting with co-workers and neighbors, traffic sounds, emergency vehicles, birds and aircraft, machines, and spoken word cut-up type stuff. Please, if possible, watch the movie in Full Screen viewing mode on the biggest screen you have available, and headphones are recommended.
More Or Less is a 15-minute personal diary slideshow movie with dictaphone assemblage soundtrack by Hal McGee. Recorded January 2-9, 2020, in Gainesville, Florida. Contributions by Rafael González, Leslie Singer, Chris Phinney, Dylan Houser, and Stanley. Some photos by JoAn McGee. Audio photographic folk art. High Definition picture and sound. Hello Friends, my new slideshow movie, More Or Less, consists of 650 iPhone photographs paired with dictaphone recordings of four Sony ICD PX-470 stereo digital dictaphones. I think it looks and sounds great! The 17-gigabyte video file took about three hours to upload to YouTube. Please, if possible, watch the movie in Full Screen viewing mode, and headphones are recommended.
I play Monotron synthesizers and 2-string pink dumpster guitar in the soundtrack, plus you will hear me interacting with co-workers and neighbors, traffic sounds, emergency vehicles, birds and aircraft, machines, and spoken word cut-up type stuff. Below I will show you a selection of stills from the movie. |
Electronic Cottage
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