uncommon ambience

1990s Vermont college party ambience. So we have our first PG-13 episode — for mild/simulated drug and alcohol use. Nothing harder than flowers or bottles of malt liquor. Also no foul language, fisticuffs, or flirts. 
Vermont makes for a comfy place to get crunk. It might be instructive if you think of our mildly lawless parties in the Green Mountain State as equal parts trap house and ski lodge. There would be a bong going just feet from a quaint crackling fire, with typically someone knitting a scarf between ⁠hits⁠. Flannel everywhere.
I recognize that there are folks out there in recovery, and y’all should maybe skip this week’s episode. I haven’t had anything to drink in a decade this April, so I feel far enough away from that dragon to reminisce somewhat fondly on those off-campus winter get-togethers. (But subscribe before you move on so you can still follow our regularly scheduled cozy chaos).
Quick aside on the more mature ambient swing — if you remember back to the aughts, Marvel Studios cracked the formula of comic book movies in their first swing, Iron Man. The formula of adhering to a rigid three-act structure while always employing two bad guys and having our favorite actors and actresses play the superheroes.
At about the same time, Lionsgate was releasing Punisher: War Zone, a super-violent movie that plays like unironic McBain. And what separated the opulent violence of Iron Man from the Punisher’s financially stable man’s views of street justice was a Marvel Knights banner. 
Gawd, now I have to explain Marvel Knights… look, it’s classic 1980s-era anti-hero vibe ****. And a paromasia — the phonetic side of “knight” leading us into imaginings of dark and grimy spaces, and the proper definition of armored soldier also being applicable. Exactly the kind of word play Stan Lee et al got out of the bed in the morning for.
Marvel Knights on the comic side was the gritty, ostensibly more realistic take on crime fighting in the mean streets. Helmed in part by Joe Quesada (a hero of mine from his Ash comic days, which portrays a fireman crimefighter)… I should stop. Oh no — real quick I posted an early promotion for Marvel Knights in Wizard Magazine co 1999, check it out!
Anyway, all of this to say, I toyed with making a new graphic banner for this episode along the lines of “uncommon ambience Knights.”
BOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Ooph, that was a long walk to get to a thing I almost did. Look, I’m not looking to lose any of my nature-ambience-loving folks by ambushing them with some debaucherous ****. I’m just going to drop a PG-13 on the cover and cross my fingers no one calls me a dork.
For this week’s episode, I’m remembering my buddy’s party magnet on the outskirts of town. It had steam pipe heat and a fireplace, something I had never experienced (most steam heating I dealt with was in apartment buildings or my military school, and never combined with a fireplace). 
Electronic music could be heard droning in the background though not as loud as the police scanner my buddy insisted be monitored. Cops did stop by occasionally though no one ever heard they were on Winch Hill Rd before they showed up.
It was an old house on a hill, prone to howling winds that blasted over the mounds of snow, carving frozen waves and snapping weak tree limbs.
On my way up to the front porch, I would plant my surplus beer into the snowpack near the door. Punching the bottles into a frigid cocoon. I never stuck it in the fridge — it’d become communal; I’d be sharing.
Front door was never locked; you just walked in and made yourself known. Or not — there was frequently a random dude (wearing flannel) passed out on the floor that no one recognized.
Episode cover uses a photo by Yusuf.

Billerica, Massachusetts Hotel PTAC ambience. Enjoy hours of gushing hot air on a cold winter night in your Boston-area hotel room. The TV is off, so no local TV news to slog through. 
I used to watch local news in this area. Mostly the NBC station, back in the aughts. Their promotions featured station characters referring to themselves as “the neeeews station.”
I also worked nearly two decades in local news. Take it from me: you could give up commercial local TV entirely and not miss a beat.
Aside from what you think of Ralph Nader from a political perspective, he had the commercial news industry dead to rights in the summer of 2000: “Look at your late-evening news… It's 30 minutes. Nine minutes of ads; three minutes of street crime right at the beginning, never corporate crime, very superficially covered; one minute of impromptu chit-chat between the anchors; four minutes of weather; four minutes of sports — and that's what happens in your town tonight.”
Nader didn’t mention that our weather studios were named after local florists, and sports were “powered” by local Toyota dealerships.
At one job, a befuddled new anchor approached me in the hall.
“Do you know where the ‘Terrorism Desk is?”
“Oh, for sure,” I said. “You want the lobby.”
The lobby had an open window to the station’s master control setup, flashing with over thirty monitors showing color bars, live cams, satellite feeds, and other inputs (looks impressive). And that camera station had other monikers: the “Breaking News Desk,” “Hurricane Whomever Desk,” and “We Have a New Baseball Team in Town Desk.”
Still just the lobby.
Nader also didn’t mention sweeps week, the designated ratings period when stations try to attract the largest possible audience. Viewership is collected from a small sample of homes with Nielsen boxes — sometimes just hundreds — that determine a region’s TV habits. Sweeps weeks set advertising rates, deciding how much a law firm or Buffalo Wild Wings has to pay to appear in a commercial break.
Sweeps week is also a time of intrigue, danger, and sensationalized threats — online predators, out-of-control crime, spikes of spammers. I’m not being facetious: in Albany, I saw a promo claiming drinking water could be dangerous (the water is piped in from the Helderbergs, some of the cleanest water a small city could hope to access — you could eat off the floor in the Helderbergs).
Sweeps week is also when favorite network TV characters die. J.R. was shot during sweeps. Brad Pitt showed up on Friends during sweeps.
At one station, a producer said, “If Oprah has a Dancing with the Palins…” we’d beat our rival in the 5pm slot. It was the last day of sweeps, Oprah had Bristol and Sarah Palin gab it up on her program. We did hit #1 for the 11 that sweeps period due to the Bristol Palin-led Dancing with the Stars. 
Sweeps also judge station performance. If you watch local television and see a “We’re #1 in something” ad, that’s what that is all about. Those ads are specifically for station management, no one else gives a ****.
Speaking of — once, walking into a station bathroom, I heard a toilet flush, and a colleague walks out of the stall holding his bag of Chipotle. 
These are folks you could stand to listen to less, is all I’m saying.
Postscript-ish story: when I worked for a station that shared a newsroom with Politico.
One morning, I’m walking into my department through the Politico sales area, gabbing with an awesome lady I worked with. Because I’m a stupid klutz, my hand bangs the side of a desk and dislodges my lunch. Which was soup in a Tupperware bowl. And it didn't just spill — it exploded.
Clam fragments and sad potatoes amongst a red ooze splashed and soaked into the carpet (which, I’m not embellishing here, was new and cream-colored).
I don’t know what smells pleasing to you at 8:57 AM — I’m positive it isn’t canned Manhattan Clam Chowder hit with 27 spluts of Tabasco.
Awesome lady grabs my elbow and is like, “Go, go, go, go.”

A tambouras is running through the river… ambience. 

I don’t have much this week. The magic of the holiday passed pretty quickly as the news kicked back on with the new thing to worry about. Only they don’t seem too worried about it, which really worries me.

Honestly, just turn off the TV. **** them. Listen to this week’s episode, which is an earlier recording of Vermont’s Mad River and a buzzing tambouras (and a distant drum). Ignore the world.

Or turn on a semi-autobiographical film about two brothers in Montana who like to fly-fish the crap out of a river with their dad while speaking earnestly, often. The movie A River Runs Through It is the inspiration for this week’s title (and more, if I fished around for a deep, dangling metaphor or something).

I saw the film when I was 16 and would have preferred to be next door for the screening of Under Siege. I could just make out the muffled screams of slaughtered bad guys booming from the speakers in the auditorium to my right. I agreed to A River Runs Through It because my sister was bringing a friend I thought was cute.

We’re ending the year in a wonderfully bleak Vermont valley, already covered in snow and taking on more. Spend the night listening as the small flakes pile up around you and the winds howl over the peaks.
The holidays are gone, we flip the calendar back to the beginning with a new number to reign over it all. January, 2026. Ensconced in winter’s tomb until mid-April. But it sure looks pretty. The slight nighttime glow of Vermont’s small giants, the Green Mountains, covered in white, can make even the dullest early months feel magical. 
Just don’t forget to silence your phone — while we may be near South Royalton and far enough from everywhere else — the 5G will still bring in the incessant pocket buzzing of your phone (This is Vermont not the Oort cloud. You can get NYE messaging here).
Look, I’m pretty sure many of the other New Year’s–adjacent uncommon ambience posts are painted with personal feelings about my least favorite holiday. I’m not here to rain on anyone’s ball droppings — I’ve done that enough already. 
This is the day we celebrate “new beginnings” while our health care costs reset, local governments enact unpopular new rules, and we stand in front of couches or bar stools toasting “my year!”
And all night, messages and group chat alerts from all the people in our lives.
The cinephile friends continuing their NYE phone-buzzing group chat that you somehow got added to. Tonight they started a movie together at an exact time so the Statue of Liberty smashes the roof of the Manhattan Museum of Art at exactly midnight.
And you know damn well why you were added to that group — it was that movie take you absentmindedly assented that got you added to that group chat. Something about Rachel Dawes being swapped with Ellie Burr without changing either movie. It was a crowded party. A buddy was dangling on a trembling limb of being labeled “weird,” and so you swooped in with a reflexive “totally agree.”
Now you’re in a movie-people chat. Tonight they’re watching Ghostbusters II, randomly dealing out their dark-horse New Year’s movies, when — guys — you won. We’ve ceded Die Hard to Christmas. We don’t need to do that with every holiday.
There will be folks accounting for an earlier wave of pocket buzzing — the folks who don’t salute any dropping ball and want that known. Sending out all flavors of “in bed at 8 p.m., ttyl!”
Also, the post-midnight flurry of photos: sleeping children. They almost made it! Oh, how wholesome. You knew Anderson Cooper and platform-specific lip-synching wasn’t going to keep your kids awake.
The counter-culture folks still picking up Animal Crossing New Leaf for their long abandoned town’s celebration — 
And… I’m mocking NYE again — probably for the third year in a row.
Maybe spend a quiet evening amongst the snow of Southern Vermont. It’ll work great at counteracting whatever fireworks your neighbor saved from the 4th of July and is definitely setting off tonight. Nighttime winter Southern Vermont snow. Wind over the Green Mountains, falling snow, and quiet rural winter sounds. An ambient sound podcast episode for sleep, focus, and relaxation (trying some SEO suggestions from a pal as I typically use this entire text block to rant — I wouldn’t need to do this if y’all felt like subscribing to uncommon ambience).
Make it your New Year’s resolution to subscribe to the scrappy little sound podcast that only wants success for you in the new year — unless you’re evil.
Episode art made in photoshop.

White Castle steam-griddle station... ambience.

The perspective of this week’s episode is near the burger steaming station (if you’re curious how that operation goes, let Double Dare’s Marc Summers walk you through it). And not to worry — you can sleep at this steaming station; no one is worried about what you’re doing.

And BTW, this isn’t sanctioned or intended to be an ad. I’m just a fan and would love to imagine myself within arm’s length of those steamy sliders. I have a bit of a White Castle problem: I have the White Castle Pumas, I’m usually a sack of ten and a Cherry Coke (no fries) — if I were hungry enough to add fries at any other fast-food spot, I’m spending that hunger on another sack of ten.

And as a programming note: if the White Castle Corporation sends me a cease-and-desist, this description will instead be geared toward the oddly shaped meatloaf burgers my father would make, stuffed with Bac-Os, mushrooms, breadcrumbs, and onions. The patties were so oddly shaped, if they were in orbit they would be confused with Saturn's moon, Hyperion.

One of the most notorious of these family “burger nights” ended with us watching a VHS of my mother at work in the cath lab. Had to wait until the end because she said something funny. Aside from the occasional flying streams of blood, it was hella boring.

So watch this space!

Until then — we are boosting the Castle for free. And I have to think that the oft-trod subject of “Where the hell are they?” adds to their nostalgic appeal — at least for those of us who know there are a bunch in New Jersey, but we’re not quite sure where. I swear the White Castles of New Jersey operate in the Doctor Who universe. White Castles only ever appear like, “Surprise *****! I’m in Ledgewood now!” And then maybe it’s not there next time because… TARDIS perception filter.

And I haven’t seen the Dude, Where’s My White Castle? movie, so I could just be describing the plot of that. It’s a thread that runs through all of us. No matter where we as a species go — like, we could be going into space — we still somehow need to drive through New Jersey first (and hopefully near a food exit with a Castle logo).

I was on a road trip with a buddy in ’09, and White Castle was the “food exit” around Perth Amboy. I nudged him: “White Castle, man — let’s go.”

“Nah, man,” he said. “There’ll be one up there. Don’t worry.” My buddy never liked leaving the highways in NJ for local roads. I suspected the lack of legal left turns spited him somehow.

But I countered with a pre-I-told-you-so — like, “If you see a White Castle, even if you’re not hungry, you go. It doesn’t matter how New Jersey you think your destination in New Jersey is — you can’t count on White Castle being there.”

Parsippany burned us, and we ate Burger King or some ****.