Artist Profile: Hal McGee

Hal McGee (Gainesville, FL): NanoHz No.0

My name is Hal McGee. I have been making homemade recordings of my own experimental, electronic, industrial and noise music since September 1981. In Indianapolis, Indiana in the early 1980s I recorded several tapes of experimental industrial avant pop with Debbie Jaffe, as a duo under the name Viscera. Viscera appeared on countless international compilations. In 1984 we each started solo recording projects. Jaffe recorded several tapes as Master/Slave Relationship, and later several LPs and CDs, on into the 1990s. In the 1980s I recorded about two dozen tapes of power electronics, industrial, and experimental electronic music under the name Dog As Master. I had a track on the first Dry Lungs compilation, as well as many other international compilations. In the mid-1980s Jaffe and I operated the Cause And Effect International Distribution Service. We distributed homemade experimental music tapes from artists all over the world: U.S.A., Canada, England, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Norway, The Netherlands and others. We sold, traded and gave away more than 5,000 tapes in three years from 1984-87. Cause And Effect was also a label. In addition to our own tapes, Jaffe and I released recordings by Nurse With Wound, Merzbow, Borbetomagus, Controlled Bleeding, F/i, D.D.A.A., Negativland, John Duncan, Blackhouse, Haters, Vox Populi, Algebra Suicide, Jabon, Human Flesh, and more. We also released four compilations, which I have recently reissued on CDR. In 1988 I moved to Florida. Within a few months I began a new project: Electronic Cottage Magazine, which took "an inside look at The Hometaper Phenomenon, Cassette Culture and Electronic & Experimental Music". I published six issues of the magazine from 1989 to 1991, and sold something like 5,000 magazines. I also published three 90-minute tape compilations in conjunction with the magazine. I have recently reissued these compilations as well. In the 1980s and early 90s I collaborated with several of the best underground hometaper recording artists: Al Margolis of If, Bwana (under the name Bwana Dog), Chris Phinney (of Mental Anguish), Jabon, Dimthingshine, NOMUZIC, David Prescott and others. I took a three year vacation from music-making activities, from 1992 through mid-1995. Since then I have recorded more than 60 full-length tapes and CDs of new experimental and electronic music. I have done a lot of solo recordings, but I have also collaborated extensively with other recording artists: Chris Phinney (Mental Anguish), Ironing (Andrew Chadwick), Microwave Windows (Brandon Abell), Paramutual Operator (Jenifer Abell), Brian Noring (EHI, 360 Sound), Phil Klampe (Homogenized Terrestrials), Charles Rice Goff III (Turkey Makes Me Sleepy), L.G. Mair, Tom Sutter, Emil Hagstrom (Cock ESP), Keith Nicolay (Post Prandials), Dave Wright (Not Breathing), Big City Orchestra, Al Margolis (If, Bwana), Carl Howard (NOMUZIC), John Hajeski (Busyditch), Bret Hart, and others. In 1997 I published a few issues of a personal zine reporting on my music activities, called HalZine. In 1998 I produced the Tape Heads International Compilation Series, eight 90-minute cassettes of recordings by more than 200 audio artists from all over Planet Earth. Over the last 24 years I have made recordings in a wide variety of experimental music subgenres and styles (and have crossed and mixed these styles to make new creations): electronic, free improvisation, space music, electroacoustic, tape cut-ups, tape collage, industrial, power electronics, deconstructed rock, spoken word, "noise", ambient, abstract sound sculpture and painting, etc. Recently I became a member of the Tapegerm Collective, the Internet's premier musician community. And in October of 2006 I started doing live performances again, after a dry spell of 19 years. I have released 158 albums.

www.myspace.com/halmcgee
halmcgee.com