7 years ago I recorded Nature Guy and Nothing Happened

10/2/2018

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".

3 Comments

Electronic Cottage
Editor
Hal McGee

I have been making my own homemade experimental music since 1981.

I was an active participant in the 1980s Cassette Culture scene, and I operated the Cause And Effect Cassette Distribution Service and label, and recorded solo as Dog As Master, and in a duo as Viscera.

From 1989 to 1991 I published six issues of the original Electronic Cottage print magazine.

In the last 36 years I have recorded, produced and released more than 300 solo audio works, collaborations and compilations. In the last two years I have revived my personal zine, HalZine.

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Rafael González

10/2/2018 12:22:17

It is really interesting and instructive (inspiring) for me to listen to these recordings and read your words.

Dylan Houser

10/2/2018 19:09:59

I love these dictaphone collage albums. They're what inspired my Extravagant Malaise album from last year. Unfortunately I no longer have a working microcassette recorder, and those have been impossible to find in recent years (short of looking online of course). I've been recording on my cell phone, but it's just not the same :(

Thomas Park link

10/2/2018 20:50:00

This reminds me of a realization I had with listening, where it helps me to stop thinking about what I expect to hear, for whichever reasons, and to start assembling what I DO hear into my head as a set of sounds, assembled with whichever due deliberation-- i.e. I am not always sure what to think, but from the pieces of sound, what CAN I say? Often, quite a bit. Thanks, Hal.