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In the month of April 2025 I downloaded 15 albums from Bandcamp. Below you will find the album cover artwork for each album. Click on the album cover to go directly to the album on Bandcamp. Many of the artists have included extensive liner notes on their album pages. Others have offered sparse information on their album pages. Additionally, below you will find Bandcamp audio players for each album, in case you want to sample the album by streaming it directly from this page as you read the article. I have asked all of the artists to give us additional information on the ideas, inspirations, methods, gear used, and other info that is not found on the Bandcamp album pages. Some of the artists declined, some had little extra to say about their albums, and other artists went into great detail. I have not written reviews of the albums or ready-made blurbs for your promotion. That is not what this article is about. You do not need me to interpret the sounds on the albums. You can listen for yourself and experience the music first-hand. My audio art and my life are one and the same! I create my audio art to celebrate the joy of life and existence! I create my audio art to celebrate my friends! I create my audio art for you! In this world we need each other more now than ever before! I publish these Bandcamp Reports to make connections with my friends! Dear friends, please contact each other and continue the exchange of sound art!
 Dylan Houser — Goth Luau  Dylan Houser: Many of the ideas on Goth Luau had been brewing around in my head, in my notepad, and on my phone’s hard drive for several years, and I finally found an appropriate home for said ideas. For example, the album cover’s original source image was taken on Halloween of 2021, and then run through a glitch app generator two years later, and then finally released to the public nearly two years after that. The title was conceived and stored away in 2022, taken from an episode of Degrassi: the Next Generation. There had been multiple drafts of Goth Luau that had been considered, but ultimately ended up being scrapped because I was either dissatisfied with the material, or I felt that it was better suited for different releases. Much of the scrapped material ended up on the albums In the Doldrums… and Channel Drift. What ended up making the final cut of the album was recorded on November 19th, 2024, when I was getting ready to perform on the radio show Lumpytunes down in Sarasota on WSLR…and also when I was recovering from a fractured knee I had sustained after I slipped and fell at my job just a little over a week prior. The sound source is a pocket noise synth being run through various setups, half of them including pedals, the other half not. The half not including pedals included a Roland Micro Cube. There’s still a lot of material from this session that had to be cut due to time constraints, as I at least wanted to fit the album on one CD. I had also considered having it be a double CD set including material recorded in 2022, but I decided to keep it down to one disc, and that the extra material didn’t really fit the flow of the album anyways. Review by Jerry Kranitz: Goth Luau, the latest from Dylan Houser. Dylan’s previous album - Imperial Lunar Matrix - was all about cosmic sound explorations. Hooooo-BABY! Has he done a big 360! Goth Luau is total electronic freakout aggression. The Bandcamp notes say this was recorded during an evening when Dylan was dealing with a fractured knee. If his goal here was to let us know exactly how that felt, then mission accomplished. We’ve got lots of space effected blends of engines revving, raging, rumbling, screeching, pulsating, tornadic squalls, harsh blasts… at times I felt like I was caught up in the core of a tornado, or an outer space geomagnetic storm, or being under the business end of a cosmic pummeling jack hammer. I love artists who throw me for a complete loop from one album to the next. ~~ two albums from Walter Campbell ~~ Walter Campbell — Walterpurgisnacht IV  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. book on VHS — Over The Top  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) Robert Lawson Trio Again!  Robert Lawson: I started building the Dulcimers in lockdown after being away from music for a while. I had just completed a five year poetry project..writing and producing a book of poems once a month for five years and wanted a new challenge. I remembered an Irish musician called Michael O'Shea I heard in the late 80s who had build a kind of dulcimer from an old door. He recorded only one album..check it out it's great. 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.  RL: At first I used a lot of effect pedals..Delay, Phaser, Tremolo but slowly worked towards a more acoustic sound. Now I only use an EQ pedal and some reverb live. As for recording I have a Tascam digital 4 track and I often just record on my phone when I am playing solo. I spent years recording on a bigger home studio but got burnt out and now opt for a quicker and convenient method. I have always been a fan of Lo-Fi and enjoyed putting stuff out on cassette back in the day. When I came across the book Cassette Mythos featuring people like Eugene Chadbourne (who I put a gig on for in the 90s, Hal and Don Campau I felt vindicated in my direction. Now I upload stuff to Bandcamp and have started putting out CDrs as mini record style albums. They come in small jackets and paper sleeves and the CDs themselves are painted black like vinyl albums. It saves on plastic and I enjoy making them as an art project in itself.  Robert Lawson Trio at Polivante minutefest — live at the Fork and Spoon 
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
 Will Fawcett, Faustine Papelli, Ian Rockette, Owen Reese  Scott Bazar as eggtooth
 Owen Reese and Ian Rockette
 Joel Switzerland, Ian Rockette, and Owen Reese
 Carl Beard, John Williams, and Joel Switzer  Angela Young, Owen Reese, and Matt Guidry
 Will Fawcett and Faustine Papelli  Layla Young  Jonathan Ramer  Scott Bazar THE HEAD CLEANER Toxic Avenger & The Big Mop Sound  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. TiNy_SiLVeR_HaMMeRs / D_FNDR The Tower Moment  HM: In the future I look forward to finally meeting Floridian Dug Fender. I have enjoyed watching his short videos of him playing electronic music in outdoor settings and in his home studio. Here are a couple of examples: 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 - The Dollar Store EP  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 Zbyszko Cracker - I'm Wont To Believe  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 unPublic #110 - 25 MARCH 2025  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.    ~~ two albums from the NEUS-318 label, Japan ~~ Giulio Fontana - Auxtravaganza  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 - Frozen Memories  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  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.  Gerardo Colin's gear setup GC: To complement this, I used my analog instruments (created by Víctor Badillo, a good friend from the State of Mexico), which consisted of a noise generator through a touch plate with 6 potentiometers, 4 of them enabled for sequencer or drone mode. The second noise generator has 4 potentiometers, 3 touch points, and a photosensitive theremin. The third generator has a pair of speakers painted with India or conductive ink and can be sounded with two springs attached to cables to generate a loud, high-pitched or low, vibrating noise. Other add-ons were the Worlde Orca Mini25, a MIDI controller for using a virtual keyboard I modified for that moment, and a Yamaha PSS.21, a vintage keyboard that's like new, but I don't think I used it much and decided to get rid of it. I do remember bringing it with me. All together, and that's how CRASH BAIL 2 was created. I didn't want to record another one at home because I'd already accomplished my mission. 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. ~~ two albums from the Fusion Audio Recordings, Ohio ~~ Gintas K - Atmosfera  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  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.
7 Comments
Jerry Kranitz
5/12/2025 04:13:14
Another awesome detailed report Hal!
Jeremiah
5/12/2025 07:05:40
Awesome report!
Chris Phinney
5/12/2025 10:32:00
Defo another awesome jam packed report!
Leslie Singer
5/12/2025 12:37:41
Hal, the highlight of my morning was reading your April 2025 Bandcamp Report. Another great mix of albums, enlightening mini-interviews and pics! Very fun!!!! 5/12/2025 13:17:09
Welp, I know what I'll be doing for the rest of the day. Thanks for the detailed reviews...
Rafael González
5/12/2025 14:07:40
Very, very good article! I'm enjoying it.
Brian Callahan
5/12/2025 16:08:19
Hal, cool commentary on the various artists. I will check out some of them in the near future AND share your reviews/comments/info with my son Ben who is the musician in the family. Fascinating to see all the various methods and instruments, plus I learned a new word which is bricoleur (online dictionary says - > a person who engages in bricolage.) thanks! keep it coming. Leave a Reply. |
photo by A. Chadwick
Electronic Cottage
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