Bandcamp February Report: albums by my friends

   Bandcamp is always an embarrassment of riches. In the month of February I downloaded and listened to 20 albums. I paid for most of the downloads, and I do not mind spending a dollar or two to listen to new and reissued sounds by my friends new and old.

   I love the fact that bigger, more well-known names in the indie rock and underground music scenes — such as Can, Sonic Youth, Stereolab, Nurse With Wound, even Peter Gabriel! — are using Bandcamp to make their music available to the public!

   I will always prefer music by people I know! It means more to me personally. When I exchange sounds with another artist it enriches the experience of listening and making my own music. I will always be open to trading download codes (one album at a time) with anyone who reads this! See the bottom of this article for the newest release on my Bandcamp page.

   I usually charge a one dollar minimum for downloads of my music and give the listener the option to pay more if they can or wish. This allows the listener to participate, in a sense, because they can determine the value of the music to them and show their appreciation.

   Hopefully this article will inspire you to make your own voyage of discovery on Bandcamp!

   Like I talked about in my previous article on Bandcamp, streaming and downloading of music are becoming increasingly more practical and affordable for musicians and fans than old-fashioned cassettes, vinyl records, and CDs.
   For those of us who for decades produced and mailed out hundreds if not thousands of hard media copies of our music, we can look at it this way:
The money that we used to spend on paper, ink, tapes, envelopes, and postage stamps, we are now spending on our Internet service, computer gear, smartphones and tablets. Because it costs so little to publish an album on Bandcamp — in theory, nothing! — we can keep our costs low so let's keep our prices low for listeners!
​   For those of you who still prefer cassettes and discs, please note that hard copies of the albums below are often available for purchase on the same pages as the digital albums.

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.

Cause And Effect November 1985 Catalogue

caroling
​is a fun and gentle new album of improvised music
for melodicas and accordion,
recorded in an outdoor setting
​at Lake Minnehaha in Central Florida by anthony cole, longtime collaborator of Sam Rivers of Loft Jazz fame,
and flora flora.
​
I first met and saw flora flora perform at Stipulation Fest 2 in 2020.
Flora Flora will perform at her first Apartment Music show on April 4, 2025.

If you like caroling, click the cover to check out the more recent album by anthony and flora, UNTHINK.

click this banner to find more releases by the duo and other great improvisational releases by flora flora

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.

While you’re visiting the Dino Park be sure to check out the other offerings at the Bandcamp site of Brown Bear Records, a label in Palatine, Illinois.

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 purchased a download from the NEUS-318 label of Osaka, Japan for 350 Yen (which is about $2.32 U.S.).
​I need to spend more time exploring the NEUS-318 label site at Bandcamp! The label is operated by Kazuya Ishigami, who has recorded under the artist name Daruin.
​Daruin appeared on my Connection Cassette Compilation #4 in 2012.

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.

On February 11th double bassist improviser/composer Daniel Barbiero contacted me via Bandcamp messaging, and in a subsequent email exchange I learned of this interesting collaboration by Daniel, Dave Vosh, and Ken Moore titled Modulisme Session 112 - Reciprocess 08.
​
​The Modulisme series is curated by Philippe Petit, who very helpfully directed me toward an information page, where you can read details of the album’s compositional process.

Modular synthesizer enthusiasts will want to take a deep dive into the offerings at the Modulisme Bandcamp page!

Your Personal Swarm (recorded December 2023 - January 2025)
​is loaded with surprises and is great fun to listen to.

I enjoyed listening to this very personal-sounding new album by my good buddy Dylan Houser. You will hear about a shady character named Frog McDogs, and find yourself immersed in keyboards, shortwave radio, "rumble of ancient times", livestreams, running water, tiny plastic guitar, acoustic guitar, steel drum, and more.
​~Be sure to check out Dylan's newest article on the EC website.

Back in January Dan of DEATHCOMET contacted me via Bandcamp, telling me that he liked my VA10 album, and wanting my postal address so that he could postal-mail me from West Wyalong in Australia. He sent two of his earliest albums on CD-R. I wanted to hear more, so I purchased a download of his newest album, DEATHCOMET 20. Cosmic Sonic Terror Sci Fi Space Metal via electric guitar and efx is your ticket to this particular warped corner of the universe, so strap in and check out the newest sounds from deathcomet on this album.

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 hope to see and hear a lot more of Goff's work on Bandcamp in the future.
You can find links to two more fairly recent Goff albums on Bandcamp
​in my article from January.

Go here to check out Jerry Kranitz's recent article at EC about Goff's video art!

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.

MY FAVORITE ALBUM I BOUGHT ON BANDCAMP IN FEBRUARY 2025!
FREE PERSON by COOL PERSON

   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.

Hal Harmon's Cassettones

​Dating back to their first album in 2021 A Cassettone Orchestra (Zachary Short, Mike Berchou, Rob Demperio, and Hal Harmon) have gathered on a semi-regular basis in "an ongoing seasonal group therapy session channeled through cassette tapes" and recorded the results.
​Their newest album, A Dozen Eggs, was issued on Hal Harmon's Forever Escaping Boredom label, just like the other A Cassettone Orchestra albums.

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.​"

Hal Harmon playing his two Cassettones at Apartment Music 46

I am not a fan of tribute albums dedicated to pop or underground heroes (David Lynch, Delia Derbyshire, etc.) or various topics and social causes of the day, but when I saw an announcement in the Bandcamp Feed of a Can tribute album by FutureLight (Thomas Park and Wilfried Hanrath) I decided to give it a try.

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.

In February Dylan Houser told me about a sound artist who lives fairly close to him in the Lakeland, Florida area named Damon Nobles. I am looking forward to meeting Damon and seeing him perform at Apartment Music 52. Dylan pointed me toward Damon's album on the Machine Tribe Distribution label on Bandcamp, titled Production. Production contains one long track under his own name and seven shorter tracks by his sound art alternative name, UN1866. 

On the UN1866 Bandcamp page
​I found eight tracks, described as
"​the sounds of the Alpha Chemical Plant in Kathleen, Florida, captured on a field recorder, and transferred to a 4 track cassette through a series of basic analog processors."
I also found tracks by Damon on various compilations, and another album on Machine Tribe, Plant Sounds.

   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.

   Klangglomerat is a collaboration of Peter Schubert & Andreas Usenbenz (on-site recordings, interactions and interventions, resonator & granular processing, texture & circuit bend synthesizing) — with Andreas Usenbenz (Double Bass & Objects, Impulse Responses).
​   The two tracks are accompanied by a handsome 14-page PDF of photos from the sessions.

photo from the Klangglomerat PDF booklet

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

Roger Smith of Eugene, Oregon is one of my favorite electronic musicians. I am a longtime admirer of his solo work as Chefkirk, as well as his collaborations with Heather Chessman (Juice Machine), and Carl Kruger.
I have collaborated with Roger on our duo album, Nimbus (2010), and our trio album with Ironing, recorded on the same day.
​One of Roger's longest-running collaborations is a duo called ​MANDOM with Don Haugen. On the MANDOM Bandcamp site you can find releases dating back to 2011.

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!

Fail is a moniker used by Dan Fox of Homosassa, Florida for live noise performances. I have had the pleasure of witnessing Fail performing in my home at four Apartment Music shows (46-48, and 51), and I am always impressed with his sense of live-compositional style. Out of a few simple pedals and tone generators Dan sculpts harsh noise sound text textures that are always interesting to follow. Recordings from the May 2024 Tour with Vasectomy Party contains live tracks from Jacksonville, Panama City, and Chattanooga.

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.