A complete run of Electronic Cottage International Magazine in one hardcover volume
Electronic Cottage is a 468-page hardcover compilation of all six issues of Electronic Cottage International Magazine, originally published between 1989 and 1991. Edited by Hal McGee and published by Korm Plastics, the book collects the full run of one of the more substantial print documents to emerge from the cassette culture and DIY home recording scene of that period.
What the magazine documented
The six issues covered a broad range of material: practical articles on home recording, profiles of artists and independent labels, scene discussion, and the ongoing debates that shaped the hometaper community. That range is part of what gives the volume its value as a primary source. Electronic Cottage International Magazine was not an observer of the underground music press from outside — it was produced from within the networks it described, and that proximity is legible throughout.
The pages show how participants in pre-internet music communities communicated, circulated work, and maintained contact across distances through mail-based exchange and tape trading. As a collected document, the material holds together as a record of how a decentralised culture organised and represented itself in print.
Edition and context
This volume carries a foreword by Jerry Kranitz and design by Studio Bertin. It sits within the broader Music Books & Sound Culture catalogue at Lokator100 — alongside other publications concerned with experimental music, independent publishing, and sound culture history.
Hal McGee
Hal McGee is an American experimental musician, tape artist, and one of the key figures associated with cassette culture. His work connects homemade recording, mail-based exchange, compilation culture, and independent distribution. The Electronic Cottage project grew directly out of that activity.
In the years surrounding the magazine, McGee was also running Cause And Effect and developing a broader network of underground communication through tapes, correspondence, and self-organised distribution. That background makes Electronic Cottage especially convincing as a document: it was edited from within the culture it set out to serve.
