uncommon ambience

A Dying Summer’s Suburban Slumber (part 2)... Ambience Evening pool aerator/ lawn mowing/ bugs ambience. This recording plays in three acts, the first bit is all mowing, then mostly pool aerator and birds, then a curtain of night insects descend. The kids are back in school, and our local department store has already put up Jack-o’-lanterns. Summer is over — dead. I found eggnog at the grocery sto...

I was in the middle of folding my laundry when I heard a crackle of thunder — so I grabbed my microphone and ran out to the shed, pressed record, and dashed back to the house. My watch congratulated me for hitting my move goal. My whole young life I had been naive to calamity, feeling the universe must revolve around me and thus of course I would be some famous screenwriter with a sports car and a...

We're back in Appalachia! This recording captures about an hour on the banks of the New River in the southeastern part of West Virginia’s pan — you can call it a pan right? When I lived in Jefferson County folks to the west called us panhandlers. You’ll hear Sandstone Falls, the calls of local birds and insects, and a couple of trains rumbling by (midway and end). This week’s episode was recorded...

LOST EPISODE: Microphone Inside Domed Grill During a Thunderstorm... Ambien “Look hon! I’m using the grill.” This is a thunderstorm recording from under the dome of my (Weber Original) grill. The grill she gifted me on Father’s Day and I promptly pushed to the back corner of our yard because I am terrible at it.  Not as bad as the turkey scenes in Christmas Vacation , but close enough . The charre...

For those Over-Watching Kpop Demon Hunters, have a Soda Machine… Ambience Spend the night inside a soda machine. Think cold, refreshing thoughts — and dodge that audio-hyperglycemic earworm. My youngest is all about the Saja Boys and “Soda Pop” is her song of the summer. Alexa even recognizes what she means when she’s like “Alexa, play 'Soda Pop.'” Alexa isn’t playing Robbie Williams . [Un...

I'm a Fan of Fan; MD B&B Bathroom Fan... Ambience Bed and Breakfast Bathroom Fan Ambience … This is the bathroom fan from our room in a quaint B&B near Antietam. Last week’s recording from the woods was from their property —thank you, Antietam Overlook Farm ! I have some more summer sounds on the way next week, but I wanted a fan break… We haven’t had a fan episode in awhile and as I’v...

Overnight Appalachia Atop Antietam ... Ambience Mountain forest late night into early morning Eld Ridge (10pm-2am), overlooking the Battlefields of Antietam. A few days late this week as I was at the final Wu-Tang New York City show and then a stay near Antietam for my wife’s birthday (Happy birthday, hon!).  My Wu-review contact-high influenced (no one tell my mom) and punctuative-free bluesky-ca...

Ferry carport parking and sail ambience... Park your hooptie and get ready to sail across the sound to Vineyard Haven. The Steamship Authority has come a long way since its pre-2K promise of, “Get in the standby line before noon, and you’ll get on a boat to the Vineyard at some point today.” I often wonder: who was the madman behind that carmageddon inducing promise? If you’ve been anywhere near B...

So there's a rocky island off the coast of Maine that looks like Ireland in miniature. The island stands a few hundred feet from an ⁠ infamous axe murder site⁠ . And there are no cheap t-shirts or fudge joints (although I hear you can get  Ice Cream a few islands over ); this is a place where science is happening. The gull’s mate here during the summer months and the island becomes a battlefield f...

Martha's Vineyard; Nature's Yacht Rock... Ambience Listen to the sounds of waves, the birds, sparse Beach Rd traffic, ferry and other nautical stuff from 11pm until dawn. The recording took place on a harbor beach, a few stone skips from the Black Dog Tavern (and you will find the perfect skipping stones down at the water's edge). Let the waves calm you. Let your stress go the way I’m...

2025 Cape Cod Cicadas emergence … Ambience Back from a well needed North-East holiday break. I had inadvertently stumbled upon what local papers are calling “ The Great Cape Cod Cicada Comeback! ” That's right cicadas have emerged. And the voices (is it their voices making the noise or legs I have no idea) you are hearing were living in the ground for 17 years. So this journey for the Cape Cod...

Rain in car, plus: wipers, marimba and a pipa. "It's rain with feeling!" Look; I've been working on a new "At the..." ambience, that I wanted to release this week, but it's about a fictional dystopian California crime... And there's probably enough dystopia to go around fictional or otherwise. So... audible... the football audible not the books on tape for your phone Audible. Gawd, speaking of whi...

May 29th Thunderstorm in the Mid-Atlantic Thunderstorm — Anyone could use a mostly mild half-hour thunderstorm. Turn it on and think about cheese; or the worst salad dressing you ever had. 

Early morning (3-6am) bird chatter ambience — So I live in a metropolitan area within a town next to a highway…  Actually let me start a different way; what we perceive individually as silence, is nowhere near reality. I’ve learned this having stupidly rushed to interesting natural sound-makers like brooks and falls, only to realize later these sound-maker’s proximity to vehicular traffic, tarnish...

Waterfall, pink noise, ambience. Go ahead and chase waterfalls for eight hours, you may feel better. You may feel better if — is irregardless a legit word? I had beans for breakfast.

Kitchen Dinner after Helicopter Attack; Godfather Part III… Ambience Godfather 3 stormy kitchen ambience — “Just When I Thought I Was Out, They Pull Me Back In!” We’re back at the movies and in a kitchen after a bloody helicopter attack. It’s stormy, and dinner is happening, and everything feels tense because everyone almost just died ( this scene ). I am a Godfather 3 apologist. Aside from how aw...

Any Pot in a Storm... Ambience Rain on a pot ambience — Ok so it got cloudy out and I checked my weather app — and that **** said rain and I wanted to try another pot in the yard experiment... So I put a microphone under a lobster pot and ran (because it was raining). So if you walked by my house the other day, that is why there was an upside-down lobster pot on the sidewalk. The resulting sounds...

Nobody tell my wife I put her pots in the backyard… rain ambience “What’s this?!” She gestured widely to the sink stacked with most of our pots and pans. “Oh, yeah…” I had awoken late having disabled my alarm for a laissez faire, let the Earth (or my bladder) wake me, morning. I hadn’t left a note and I can see now that I had inadvertently breached the dishes-need-to-be-done-now sink coverage. “No...

I Can Stand the Rain... Ambience With apologies to Ann Peebles and fellow Virginian Missy Elliot ; I can stand the rain against my window, it does not haunt me. Get on my window oh moderate rain for eight hours.

Star Trek: The Original Series — we’re on TV this week and on our way to Sector Z-6 to breach the neutral zone and travel into the Romulan Star empire. But first we cruise… As we try not to think about someone possibly taking a dump on the other side of the view screen. (Whaaaat?) So as I was doing research for building the TOS Enterprise bridge (Photoshop and After Effects) — I ran across a blog...

Theater projection booth ambience — the feature film is Five Minutes to Live from 1961 and starring Johnny Cash and Ron Howard. This episode also includes just about everything else I loved of that era in theater and film. There will be the pre-movie sirens call for Lobby refreshment and money back guarantees for those who have gotten too much suspense from Hitchcock’s Homicidal . And some Gregory...

Check Out My New Wash!... Ambience New washing machine, normal wash setting. And hey, this is a sequel of sorts to the ⁠infinity dryer episode a couple episodes ago.⁠ Our old washer/ dryer had to be replaced after a belt snapped. Our washer dry was so old it could remember when McDonald’s tried Pizza . There were only three Star Wars movies when our washer/ dryer were working on socks and sheets. ...

The Wet and Whirring Mystery Machine… Ambience Watery whirring faucet machine — This week’s episode revolves around a mystery, but I promise it’s not made out of people . It’s just a whirring watery wonder.

I got a new dryer!… ambience LG Dryer Cycle — A better title for this would be, "our dyer that dated back to the Clinton administration kicked the bucket." We limped along for years with that thing whining. Literally, it needed a belt replacement and it was covid times and we were like… the squealing noises aren't that terrible…   And last month the belt snapped and we sent that old...

Mild thunderstorm and a lot of rain — this recording begins Sunday night around 11-ish. And we got nowhere near the boomers our friends on the other side of the Appalachian Trail got. West Virginia looked like a sky disco for the most of the evening (from NOVA). But a thunderstorm is a thunderstorm and we break for thunderstorms here at uncommon ambience.