Synesthetech

Recording traffic passing over metal construction plates, 111 West Jackson St, Chicago, April 29, 2009 (photo by Alessandra Gillen)

Picking up where I left off, here’s my second batch of recent Chicago field recordings, my sonic farewell before Alex and I move to Ann Arbor…

1. Rain outside apartment sunporch (9:35, 20.7MB mp3)

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   Almost ten minutes of a lovely evening rain from the acoustically rich interior of our apartment’s sunporch, facing north.

2. Purple Line CTA train arriving at Howard (4:47, 10.5MB mp3)

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   A healthy portion of the second half of my morning commute (Brown line to Belmont Purple line, then Purple line to Davis). This is actually a Purple line only to Howard, so occasionally my commute has had three parts instead of two. I was lucky to get a recording of the train interior without anyone speaking.

3. Traffic over metal construction plates, 111 West Jackson St. (5:56, 12.3MB mp3)

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   Recorded at the same time the picture above was taken. A block-long stretch of Jackson Street down in the Loop has had a series of large, square metal plates on it for some time, and when the traffic runs over them they make a great booming sound which echoes amazingly off all the skyscrapers nearby.

4. Fountain, Art Institute of Chicago garden (4:00, 8.2MB mp3)

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   Public fountain season’s upon us, so this is a recording of this fountain now that it actually has water in it again.

5. Modern Wing of Art Insitute of Chicago under construction (3:20, 6.9MB mp3)

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   A compact little field recording symphony. I love the way the drone of the equipment and the traffic interplay at first, followed by the construction worker’s whistling and the woman’s footsteps in the gravel. A great beginning, middle and end. Can’t wait to finally see the inside of the new Modern Wing in person this coming weekend!

6. Walking to Sox-35th CTA station after White Sox victory (1:37, 3.3MB mp3)

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   A nice moment of public euphoria, saxophone and changing acoustic spaces as we walk across a bridge over the freeway and into the Sox-35th CTA Red Line station.

7. Birds, cars and El trains, 5:15am (8:47, 17.3MB mp3)

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   Since I have the sleeping habits of a 70 year old man, I usually wake up around 4:30am. When spring starts, the morning birds go crazy. This was the first really riotous bird morning of the season, and i recorded this out the windows of our living room.

8. Chicago River bridge raising alarm bells from Merchandise Mart CTA train platform (1:32, 3.1MB mp3)

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   I’ve rarely seen the bridges over the Chicago River down in the Loop raise up to let boats pass underneath. I’d never seen the bridge raise up in front of the Merchandise Mart CTA train platform while I was actually on the train until this past weekend. With the bridge up, the train couldn’t pass, so we disembarked and stood on the platform so I could get a recording of the bridge’s warning bells as it lowered back down into place, mixing nicely with the walkie talkie communications of a CTA employee standing next to me.

9. Hissing air vent above Chicago Union Station Amtrak track, National Train Day (2:25, 4.6MB mp3)

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   After touring an Amtrak Superliner train during the free National Train Day event at Union Station last weekend, we stepped back onto the track and walked right under an air vent with an amazing hiss. That wall of white noise has a few cracks in it which expose some of the other sounds in the station at the time.

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IMAGE: Passive-Aggressive street busker sign spotted at the Chicago Folk and Roots Festival, Lincoln Square, July 2008

Time for a new batch of field recordings…these are just some odds and ends I’ve recorded in the past few weeks…

1. Huettenbar ambience (1:12, 2.4MB mp3)
   Alex and I finally decided to try out Huettenbar, a Bavarian-style pub close to our apartment in Lincoln Square. Walking inside was like stepping into another world: gone were the Lincoln Square hipsters and young couples with baby carriages, replaced by a much older (and much more consistently German) crowd. A two-man band (consisting of two 60-somethings on guitar and synth) kept the crowd “hopping” with Elvis covers and traditional German beer-drinkin’ songs, while the crowd got rowdier as time went on. This was recorded shortly before we left, and is notable for the drunken man yelling out the words “deadly silence” at about 0:50.
2. Angry bike rider in Evanston (0:09, 426k mp3)
   A little lunchtime squabble between a bike rider and an SUV driver.
3. Malfunctioning iPod, State Street Chicago Apple Store (0:43, 1.5MB mp3)
   Alex noticed this iPod spitting out digital junk upstairs, conveniently located right next to the iPod Bar, so I took a chance and stuck my Zoom H2 inside the greasy Bose headphones attached to it and got this recording.
4. Audience entering the Music Box Theater (4:36, 8.3MB mp3)
   We headed to the Music Box this weekend to see Godard’s Contempt, which was more than worth it if for nothing else than the scene of Jack Palance throwing a film canister like a discus — absolutely priceless. But this recording of the nearly empty theater beforehand is also fun…like the incredibly loud squeaking seats once the music gets going and it no longer feels like we’re sitting in someone’s silent living room, like it did before they remembered to turn on the music.
5. Thunder outside our apartment window (4:51, 9.1MB mp3)
   The weather was pretty crazy all day yesterday — the sky became pitch black at 7am after a perfectly normal sunrise, and bad rains moved in off and on all day. This is the evening semi-calm storm before…
6. Tornado sirens outside apartment window (2:13, 4.2MB mp3)
   This was definitely a little frightening, as we followed the rain on the radar on our laptops and Alex declared “There’s a tornado in Logan Square!” Luckily it passed by without any real damage (at least in our neighborhood — looks like it wasn’t so pleasant around the rest of the city though). But that didn’t mean anything to our cat, who sat under my desk the whole time in a state of kitty panic.

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