Hello Friends!
March was a busy month full of sonic adventure for me on Bandcamp! I downloaded and listened to 33 albums by new and old friends. I listened to all of the albums again as I composed this article. I have divided the March album reports into two parts. Below is Part 1. Read Part 2. These Bandcamp Reports of mine are my simple, modest attempts to show appreciation and support for the music and audio art of my friends, peers, comrades, and fellow travelers. I have offered a few introductory words for each album, some more than others. I am not inclined to write reviews. This is not a review column! This is not a consumer guide with ratings and 1 to 5 stars. This is about community, sharing, love, and support — things every artist needs. When possible I have added additional information by the artists themselves, in their own words. The best and most direct way to experience this music is to listen. I have provided Bandcamp audio players for all of the 15 albums below. It costs nothing to stream the music. If you like what you hear, purchase a download for optimum sound quality. I always select WAV files when I download. I purchased most of these Bandcamp album downloads for a dollar or two. I traded download codes of my own Bandcamp albums for some of these albums below.
Don Campau — Ghost Wind
My first Bandcamp album purchase in March 2025 was Ghost Wind, consisting of six laid-back, chill instrumentals totaling 37 minutes by long-time home studio recording artist Don Campau. Keyboards, percussion, samples, and open-road guitar-work. I have known Don since the 1980s and I consider him to be an essential figure in any history of Cassette Culture of the 1980s. Do yourself a favor and head on over to his website for a deep dive into homemade music culture.
Here is a selection of Don's cassettes from my collection.
Bad Groupy — Arrangements in Grey and Black
Arrangements in Grey and Black captures the sound of two half-hour improvisations in Berlin and Warsaw the summer of 2023 by Bad Groupy - Jeff Surak and Kris Kuldkepp. A close listen rewards headphone-equipped attentive listeners with a wide variety of textures, treatments and dynamic range. Tapes, objects, and electronics backwash, scrape and throb like memories of dreams from last week.
Zbyszko Cracker — Everything Is Fucked
Jake Joyce is a new friend of mine who lives in the burbs west of Chicago, and I am just starting to scratch the surface of the wide-ranging offerings of his Brown Bear Records label. Last month I reported on a dino synth collab of his, and here on Everything Is Fucked we have answering machine messages, samples and tape loops, and minimalist freeform rap.
On the two longest tracks, over a mechanistic drum machine, bass and kalimba groove, Jake declaims poems dealing with topics such as the pitfalls of celebrity worship, daily life in an oligarchy, scams, consumerism, faulty insurance policies, and the hopeless frustrations of existence in the current toxic alternative politico-cultural timeline, when decisions are made for us by algorithms, media figures and “influencers". In the second track, "A Comedian" (check out the lyrics on the Bandcamp page), he raps about comedians who directed him not to vote. I asked him who he was referring to. Jake Joyce: George Carlin is the first verse. I actually consider him a "hero" of sorts, but I disagree with him on a handful of his bits from the past, such as voting/global warming/the use of racial slurs, etc. I think a lot of those thoughts come from a different time period, but there are still a lot of people who cling to them just because Carlin said them. Ironically enough, I think he would hate to know that people were blindly following everything he said "just because." The rest of the song is aimed at the Joe Rogan/Shane Gillis/Theo Von crowd. 
I asked Jake the significance of the artist name Zbyszko Cracker and he told me:
Several years ago, my friend Tony and I were coming up with band names that were puns of wrestler names. He said he wanted to start a band called "Grindcore Holly" which was a take on 90's WWF wrestler Hardcore Holly, and I jokingly said I would start a band called "Zbyszko Cracker" which was a reference to 80's AWA/90's WCW wrestler Larry Zbyszko, and, as you pointed out, the delicious Nabisco cracker.
Dylan Houser — Imperial Lunar Matrix
Imperial Lunar Matrix is a gorgeous album of lo-fi synthesizer music, created with the simplest of tools. Proof that a person does not need hundreds or thousands of dollars to create effective electronic music.
The album cover photo admirably conveys the feelings and moods of this album, which in spite of its synthetic nature possesses a deep emotional undercurrent of loss and remorse, and operates in a sphere of one eternal NOW, forever.
Dylan Houser:
I recorded the raw tracks via a sound recording app, and then messed around and slowed down the tracks in an another audio editing app, adding reverb and delay and trying my damnedest to reduce the clipping. The first track made for the album was the closing title track, which came about as a complete fluke and I liked how it sounded, so I went ahead and messed around with a few more recordings, and the album was complete. The opening and closing tracks on the album were initially recorded on the night my cat Jake (aka “Jakether”) was euthanized. The cover photo was taken at some subdivision in Mulberry, FL called Imperial Lakes, hence part of the title. 
Dylan showed me the HiChord synth he used on Imperial Lunar Matrix
Grey Tissue — Boardwalk
Gabe Konrad’s Grey Tissue project was covered in an article by Jerry Kranitz here at the EC website back in early February. Those two cassette releases were of the aggressive, industrial strain of the electronic realm.
On Boardwalk (released on the Japanese label NEUS-318) we have something completely different: "Field recordings of a wetlands nature walk with calling birds and rumbling trucks, scurrying deer and soaring airplanes. Manipulated, twisted and stretched from calm resonance to chaotic noise.”
During both of my listens I found Boardwalk meditative and brain-pleasing. Definitely music that is meant for a close listen with ear-goggles.
Jettten — Million Seller Shits
I had a lot of fun listening to Jettten’s Million Seller Shits album.
Multi-tracked improvisation-based romps with scads of general lo-fi mayhem. On the Bandcamp album page the information is sparse. All it says is: "RJ- table, objects, percussion, Casio, Steadman Pro, toys, mics, laptop, Audacity”, so I asked Ryan to tell me more. Ryan Jetten: I used to record all my live sounds with my phone voice memo app then email that to myself then convert files then build my pieces in Audacity. Then I bought a 2channel PreSonus interface for my laptop but really for the interview show. Just recently I decided to record my noise into it. The other Jettten albums are from the phone and don't have the live room stereo field. I'm glad you noticed that! For that album, I had my objects on a maybe 6 feet metal folding table with one mic on each end of the table creating a stereo field. And did several fumbling of the objects in various manners across the table. But then I just arbitrarily smashed takes on top of each other and I will edit all that to create little "movements" within the piece using Audacity effects occasionally. Steadman Pro is a zebra striped electric guitar. It is on one track. I have no traditional knowledge of how to make music. I'm 51 now so I've settled into my ways, which are based on mistakes and chance mostly. Ryan Jetten’s MakeWorldGooder Recordings Bandcamp label is super active! 
REANIMATOR by GOZNE
I was quite happy to find this archival reissue on Bandcamp of GOZNE's 1992 cassette release, REANIMATOR. Chilean artist Eduardo Yañez Torres and I have been friends for more than a decade. Under the name Zacarias Malden he contributed to my Connection Cassette Compilation 1 (2011), the Museum of Microcassette Art (2013), the first Cheap And Plastic (2012) compilation and the second volume (2021) as GOZNE too!
The REANIMATOR digital album consists of two files replicating the original two sides of the tape, which had seven songs each, made with samples taken from the 1985 cult sci-fi comedy horror film of the same name, Crumar DS-2 synth, Casio SK-1, and Digitech effects. Charming and funky electro with churning synth basslines and tick-tocking rhythms.
Included in the download materials of REANIMATOR are several photos showing the original cassette cover and details from it.
Read Eduardo's articles at the EC website here.
HEAT ON EARTH
PBK / Spybey / Butcher / Johnson
I have known PBK since about 1990. He ran ads in some of the print issues of Electronic Cottage. I especially enjoyed his ASESINO cassette, which I consider a classic of the Cassette Culture era. You can imagine how intrigued I was when he informed me of the digital reissue of HEAT ON EARTH, a four-way collaboration with Mark Spybey, John Butcher, and Travis Johnson.
I know of John Butcher from his work in the British free improvisation scene, notably on recordings with Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Derek Bailey, and on the amazing and groundbreaking News From The Shed album (1989). And of course I know Floridian Travis Johnson, through his releases on the Ilse and Poverty Electronics label on Bandcamp. I still have fond memories of his highly-inventive performance at Apartment Music #8. There is extensive information on the artists at the Bandcamp album page.
I asked PBK to inform me and the EC readers about how the album was conceived and put together.
PBK: I wanted to do an album with Mark Spybey, I asked him and he sent me some wonderful source material in 2013. The tracks he sent were quite rhythmic, using programmed rhythms, which I seldom work with, but some of it sort of reminded me of Can, and some of it opened up as more jazz-based. I thought about what direction I might be able to take these compositions... One of the first things I did was slow down/pitch-shift one of Mark's rhythmic tracks and make into a more ambient-sounding piece. That is the "Untitled" composition on the Bandcamp release, it's basically an outtake. I wasn't unhappy with it, but decided, instead, to use his rhythmic pieces in their original form without manipulation and add something unique to them, I didn't want the sterility of all-electronics, or all-programmed, pieces. For a while I'd been wanting to work with an established avant garde saxophonist, the first person I asked was Ivo Perelman from Brazil, we talked on the phone and I sent him an audio file for reference, but I don't think he understood what I was aiming for and ultimately declined. Then I contacted John Butcher, a saxophonist from the UK who has performed/recorded with many stalwarts of the British experimental scene. He agreed to let me use any of the sound pieces on his album, "The Geometry Of Sentiment" from 2007. It's a solo album, mostly if not all soprano saxophone, with some electronic effects. His only instruction was that I use his tracks without adding any heavy effects to them, only some reverb to help incorporate into the mix. At the time, I had also been listening to the stuff that our friend, Travis Johnson, was doing on cello. Some of it was quite extraordinary, and I asked him if he could send me some improvised sources that might work with John Butcher's saxophone solos. He came through with some superb free improvs, at least one of which was recorded outdoors in a lively nighttime setting with insects buzzing around, it was awesome. I created the initial mixes, two tracks: "First Arc" and the title track. I sent them over to Mark and he suggested that I bring down the noise elements in that first version of "Heat On Earth". Even though I liked the noise aspect of that track, it was very propulsive, his request prompted me to re-shape it, making it less noisy but longer, using a sort-of Penderecki dramatic sound in the electronics rather than noise, and bringing out the free improv aspects more (in the last section). The interplay between Travis's cello and John's saxophone on all of these tracks was a fluke of genius. They sound like they're improvising together in real time! I added some of John's slap-tonguing sounds to the first part of the new "First Arc" and incorporated his solo sounds throughout that piece as well. And then I worked on the longest piece: "The River That Runs To The Sea Of Stars". This one uses the recordings that Travis made in his backyard, insects buzzing around the mic, incorporated just beautifully with John's sax solos, and my turntable/synth sounds sprinkled throughout. Titling was easy, I had "heat on earth", a reference to solar warming, but also sort-of a metaphor for musicians working together on something, making something "hot"! Mark and I worked on the rest of the titles as poetic narratives to that "heat on earth" concept. 
Ryan Di Giuseppe — Scars Do Not Define Me
"Lo-fi transmissions from decayed shortwave radios. Eerily beautiful pockets of sound, much more abstract than the head-on computerised noise from the artist's earlier releases."
Speech Index — Fifth Transit
On Fifth Transit we are in deep into Dream Territory with keyboards, synths, samples, shortwave, guitars beaming transmissions directly to our subconscious minds. I asked Rafael González and Nik Thursday about the working methods that they employ when making an album such as Fifth Transit.
Rafael:
I use the same equipment as always (tapes, shortwave, small synths), although on Speech Index albums I use a lot of sampler keyboards. I imagine Nik uses his synths, samplers, bass, percussion... Before starting to make an album we usually talk about it beforehand, and for my part I start to create sounds, noises, melodies or structures that go well with the idea I have of Vulcan Ironworks [their other collab project] or Speech Index or... I send these sounds, bases etc to Nik and we start building a track. Nik adds his music, mixes what he sent, etc. He shows me the possible result, we change it, or not...etc. Although this approach, this way of creating tracks, is very common, if not the most common, I think the most important thing is the idea that each of us (Nik and I) has of what our album should be like, how it should sound, what it should look like. Nik: On my end, I take Rafael's works and make some edits as necessary and add various bits and bobs that I've come up with that I think will work in tandem to his material. Using somewhat of a sound collage approach, I use samples from anywhere and everywhere of spoken words and noises. Sometimes I loop them, sometimes I use chopped up fragments, and they can be from anything really.. I also add layers here and there of music that I've created. Here, I mainly use vocals, keyboards, bass guitar, and drum machine. All very old school. I'm even back to using 4 track cassette at the moment. Most of my effects are old school pedal effects. A little bit of processing is done on my computer, but I try to keep that at an absolute minimum. 
Bret Hart — The Fred Portrait Heist
Bret Hart is a veteran hometaper whose earliest cassette releases date back to the 1980s, and he was interviewed in one of the original print issues of EC magazine. Bret and I recently traded download codes, and I have thoroughly enjoyed all four of my listens to The Fred Portrait Heist!
Here is how he describes the album on his Bandcamp:
bret h hart: guitars, electronics, Ebow, objects, Risset drum Maynard 30w hand-built tube amplifier About ten years ago I created a large series of appx 20" x 13" mixed-media paintings on paper - each commemorating a musical maverick, in my estimation. When I could, I mailed them to the musician/composer; in some cases an intermediary passed one along. 'Did Fred get his?', asked the profane student. Album project realized at home during early March 2025 in North Carolina, having observed that fifty years have passed since Fred Frith began releasing his wonderful solo guitar records. Included as bonus last track is the unedited 23m studio improvisation, warts n' all; which was subsequently sliced and diced using Audacity into eight deliberate, thematically-consistent remixes. The performance was simultaneously videotaped via Zoom Q2HD micro-recorder.
Watch Bret Hart performing The Fred Portrait Heist on YouTube
Aversion To Reality — End Of Season
I have known Bill Northcott of Winnipeg, Manitoba for several years now. He has participated in numerous Electronic Cottage community projects, including The No Electricity compilation, Weird Circus, Rocket in my Pocket, Daredevil Meditations, and many more! He curated one of the funniest and most successful EC projects, the PROCRASTINOISE compilation of 2023!
I am always interested in the sound art that Bill produces, so when he pointed me toward his newest work, End Of Season, I grabbed a download posthaste!
Whenever possible, and depending on whether I get a reply when I ask, I like to let artists themselves inform the EC readers, instead of me guessing at what is going on. To be honest, I have never been enthusiastic about writing reviews. I asked Bill to fill us in on the ideas, concepts, inspirations, gear, and methods behind End Of Season.
Bill Northcott: Right now I can tell you that I recorded it on an old Tascam 4-track cassette recorder with a microKORG, a Yamaha reface CS synth, a couple of pocket calculators (arcade and Street Fighter), a microphone going through an Ibanez Digital Delay pedal and a couple of Korg Monotron synths (delay and Duo). There’s a ukulele in there somewhere too. It was done in a couple of blasts of repressed anger in response to the constraints of time. It may be of my own doing, but outside forces have mutated and bastardized it. I digitized and EQ’d it through Audacity too. My main motivation was to simply bust out some noise. I had a vague idea of what I wanted it to sound like, and I suppose you could say I didn’t so much play the instruments so much as use them to channel the sounds you hear, sort of like a ouija board. 
Tuesday At Ten by Jake Joyce and others
Tuesday at Ten is my favorite conceptual album that I purchased during the month of March. The idea is a simple one. Jake Joyce invited friends of his in Illinois, Michigan, and South Carolina to record the sounds of outdoor emergency alarm tests that occur the first Tuesday of every month at 10:00 AM.
The 18 recordings possess a kind of minimalist conceptual unity that is at once funny, annoying, and hypnotic/meditative — a combination of field recordings, noise, and electronic music. 
CHEFKIRK — beautiful things have to be destroyed
Abstract electronic sounds of all sorts abound on the CHEFKIRK release I purchased in March. I was pleased and surprised to discover here charming music box-like sounds, mechanistic repetitive polyrhythms that trip over and through each other and get entangled, and burbling sounds like an old coffee percolator. Despite the album title the listener will find sounds that are downright gentle and even playful by anyone's standards. We also have deep, thrumming oscillator pulses and persistent glitchifications that brought a smile to this knob-twiddler's mind. The production is clean and we can hear all of the various tendrils interweaving. There were a few moments that reminded me of Dieter Moebius.
I asked Roger Smith of CHEFKIRK if he had anything he'd like to share with the EC readers about his gear and methods used on beautiful things have to be destroyed and he replied: "I will tell you what you probably already know, all tracks are recorded in one-take, very minimal editing meaning that ends are just cut or faded, all electronics with knobs and switches meaning nothing is computer generated." 
Giving Up With Stockport Swimming Team
by Stockport Swimming Team
I don't know about anyone else, but I like to have fun when I'm listening to music, and Giving Up With Stockport Swimming Team fills that ticket quite nicely! Abrasive, in your face, self-deprecating, smart-alecky, pop-art satirical, LOL-hysterical, and just all over the place.
A quick glance at the song titles gives us a taste for what's in store: "Death Of The Last Spice Girl", "Message To Jayfive: Please Stop Removing My Discogs Submissions Of The Gerogerigegege's Art Is Over Cassette", "Kill Bill Volume 3", "Acing The Mull Of Kintyre Test (with Hallend Oats188)" and 14 others, ranging in length from 10 seconds to eight and a half minutes, with the majority being around one minute. On the Vomit Hurdy Gurdy Rekordz label...based in North Korea (?!) … but we know better than that, don’t we?! Check out the other releases on the label -- I L-O-V-E those collage album covers! I'll be reporting on another Vomit Hurdy Gurdy label album in Part 2 of my March 2025 Report. 
8 Comments
Jerry Kranitz
4/4/2025 04:29:38
Great overview Hal! Love the artists quotes you included.
Hal McGee
4/4/2025 08:52:17
In Bandcamp March Report Part 2, to be published next week, I’ll talk about these albums:
Chris Phinney
4/4/2025 17:13:45
Nice article, I enjoyed it immensely
Hal McGee
4/5/2025 05:47:36
Yo Chris! Thanks for checking it out, bro!
Leslie Singer
4/5/2025 09:21:13
Hal, your monthly Bandcamp reports are just the kind of news that we all need right now. Very geographically diverse selection which is very good to know about. It is a great format to get your take on the albums and then learn more from the artists. I also enjoy reading your thoughts on the albums that I also have in my Bandcamp collection. I look forward to listening to more of the albums in this report and in part 2.
Hal McGee
4/5/2025 15:38:44
Leslie, thanks for checking out the article! I appreciate your support & interest. We all need to emphasize community now more than ever.
Hal McGee
4/6/2025 15:51:05
You are welcome, Eduardo! REANIMATOR is a fun album! Leave a Reply. |
photo by A. Chadwick
Electronic Cottage
|
RSS Feed