uncommon ambience

Chill and mildly unsettled storm watch! We’re alone in a field as a thunderstorm passes just north. Whether you're studying, working, reading, sleeping, or unwinding after a long day, this immersive ambient soundscape provides the perfect background soundtrack. No talking, no interruptions—just wind, texture and rumbles. Ignore the World.
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This week’s episode is a long passing thunderstorm built from field recordings, textured elements, and other notes. The looming thunderheads bring the torrent and rain to others. Not to us, not today. But a content note: while the storm passes us, there are distant rumbles (so, a low-frequency rumbling episode).
These are sounds that, to my ear, resemble the natural world showing off. Some international listeners may heat what sounds like military aggression—which, maybe, is a reason to skip this episode. We have a recent waterfall episode that is totally the pips, though, check it out here.
“Pips” is a thing, right? I use it all the time as a compliment, like: “That outfit is the pips,” “Those glasses are total pips,” “If you don't move your car I'm going to wrap this pip around your face.”
Apparently, “pip” is British slang? (Doom reference here.) Is pip shortened from “pip pip”? I’m not totally sure, maybe I made it all up, but I like imagining the word coming from some vintage portrayal of a rotund Brit forever clasping his gold pocket watch, the sun glinting off a piece of glass shoved into his eye furrows.
“This street vendor turkey leg is the pips!” The rotund titan would say, surveying the little people like Don Fanucci in The Godfather Part II.
Were monocles the “smart” glasses of their day? Did regular folks mock the monocle?
I'm imagining a chimney sweep spotting our slovenly monocle wearing titan of industry—like, "I’d like to jab that dude in his monocle with the pointy end of a baguette...Pip off, man.”
“Yo, you pip you, man!”
Jostling.
“Don’t touch my bread!”
“Sir, you have threatened me, and I have proof—look! A few sentences prior. I’m calling the constable!”
"Dial B for baguette!" Chimney sweep lunges, lancing the eyewear of the slovenly monocle man. The turkey leg tumbles, landing meat-side down with a "splotch."
I’m falling back on an old college radio habit of staging a fight when I have nothing better to say. 
Fights were something my buddy and I would stage on our 90s college radio show after running out of ideas. A lull in the action brought fist to hand, simulating face punching. I think we did an entire segment (5–6 minutes) of just fist and fight sounds.
We weren’t supposed to do that. Technically, we had a strict format clock. The format was blocked in quarter-hours, during which we were to play: 1) Top of Pops 2) Oldie 3) Recurrent 4) Dealers’ Choice. We did one show like that and then transitioned to just hip hop and ridiculous fictional interviews.
And we had fans! Once, while being administered a breathalyzer by law enforcement in the DJ booth at the station, the cop admitted he occasionally found our antics amusing.
Gawd, we were such ***holes—we would sign off our two-hour block with World Patrol Kids (look them up; Natalie Portman was a member), a musical group that extolled the beauty of Earth through ****** excruciating music.
It was our way of encouraging people to change the channel... Anyway, our favorite closing song was about trees, and the lyrics were: “Treeeeeeeeeeees, wonderful, beautiful, Treeeeeeeeeeees.”

Dilly dally next to diminutive falls in Shepherdstown, WV! Whether you're studying, working, reading, sleeping, or unwinding after a long day, this immersive ambient soundscape provides the perfect background soundtrack. No talking, no interruptions—just small waterfalls and good vibes. Ignore the World.
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Shepherdstown, WV Waterfall (specifically Town Run where she meets with the Potomac River)—this little body of water is feisty; it’s creek sized and rips through Shepherdstown in a delightful rush. If you are a person who might consider white noise to be their personal metronome, Shepherdstown is a wonderful place. Town Run bisects the town’s main street of shops and nearby Shepherdstown University, giving the whole area a nice audible envelope of white noise.
And as this was recorded a few hours ago, this is as close as we come to an Election Night live show of uncommon ambience [[Reggaeton Horn]].
Maybe skip the commercial news this evening? We are all going to know everything tomorrow—you might not learn what you want to know as quickly. But you won’t have to hear communication majors spinning utter horse**** about the vibes of it all, and you’ll probably get to skip hundreds of **** pill commercials.
Up to y’all, but if you want to chill with some merry little falls, press play.

Spend the night in an indoor pool! Whether you're studying, working, reading, sleeping, or unwinding after a long day, this immersive ambient soundscape provides the perfect background soundtrack. No talking, no interruptions—just late night natatorium. Ignore the World.
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It’s late and we’re hanging out in a natatorium, and already I can sense questions. What is a Natatorium? Why is this week’s episode not a frightful Halloween episode? And as such, “why is the ambience gentlemen trying to make Vincent Price cry?”
Good evening, fellow travelers. Happy Halloween and welcome to this week’s uncommon ambience. 
I’m in a lot of natatoriums, the buildings that house indoor swimming pools (my kid swims competitively). If you can get past the smell of a room engulfed in pool chemicals you will find that natatoriums house an overwhelmingly peaceful vibe. Fans and exhausts buzzing from every direction, sporadic water drop plops, mild stochastic waves. It’s a nice envelope to get cozy in. 
However they can also be a place of horrors. There’s a messed up Swedish Vampire movie that culminates (very darkly) in a natatorium. There are terrors to be found everywhere—I wasn’t hoping to make the spirit of Vincent Price shed tears over lack of Halloween vibes. Think of the unhinged Swedish vampire movie, Mr. Price.  BOOO!
Vincent Price seemed like a good dude as far horror luminaries go, he hung out with Kermit! (Probably why he gives me friendly horror Big Bird vibes—Also if you want more Vincent Price the House of Wax (1953) movie trailer was in our Night of the Living Dead episode last year.)
Isn’t there enough to be frightened by in our daily lives?
And no I am not going to tee off on the commercial news industry—actually I am, quick thought experiment: take these well dressed people off your screen and imagine them in the real world. Imagine these well dressed dip***** espousing their opinions from a neighboring cubicle in your workspace. Or a shouting debate in the produce section of a grocery store erupts while you squeeze an avocado. 
Take these esteemed ***holes off your screens, strip them of their ****ty theme songs aspiring to be John Williams or John Tesh facsimiles, take the makeup, 3D graphics and you have stripped these characters of their power. They are just annoying, people dressed for a funeral feeding you fear. **** them.
Speaking of the produce section, why do we knock on cantaloupes? What are we listening for?
My wife picked up a cantaloupe in the produce section and I was like “did you knock on the cantaloupe? You have to knock on the cantaloupe to check if it’s good.”
She knocked on the cantaloupe, “now what?”
“Hell if I know.”

It’s fall y'all! We're sitting outside a barn surrounded by trees shedding leaves in the wind.
Added musical textures, a legendary fiddler, sporadic notes and sounds make up the balance of this week’s soundscape (see below for more).
Whether you're studying, working, sleeping, or unwinding after a long day, this immersive, ambient soundscape provides the perfect background. No interruptions, no ads. Saa-lute!
Ignore the world.
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Ok, so this week we are doing a Mid-Atlantic fall pastiche! More granularly—we are going to imagine ourselves in the television variety program Hee Haw but outside and in the real world.
Hee Haw was a television variety show that ran from the 70's into early 90's and was the only program my grandparents watched that didn’t suck (how many ****** times did we need to see Gunsmoke? How was it even on every time we visited? I know the 80's didn't have a Gunsmoke channel). I crossed my fingers for that cartoon donkey and Roni Stoneman.
Hee Haw was the ****—the music was better, it was way more fun, and again, Roni Stoneman.
As for imagining ourselves in the program, let’s keep the barn, ditch the cornfields, and add Mid-Atlantic flora (major portions of this episode were recorded recently in the foothills of the Appalachians, Northern Virginia), so a lot of red maples, tulip poplars, and white oaks would be hanging over the red barn of our soundscape.
We’ll sit and listen to the trees and ghostly echoes of long-ago music. Because, like Hee Haw, we have a musical guest this week! We’re calling legendary Virginian fiddler Henry Reed out of the public domain. 
And I feel like we should quickly parse “legendary.” So Henry Reed was a musical sponge; he had a massive amount of songs stored in his head. A folklorist brought a microphone to the guy in the 60s and pressed record. Had the folklorist not shown up with a recorder, Reed's mastery of so many forgotten melodies would have disappeared with him.
Think of a future without recording devices—there might be one person left who knows "Oops, I Did it Again" or "Mambo #5." Were that person to depart (kick the bucket), so would the knowledge of those songs.
Reed specialized in traditional Appalachian fiddle music. The dude learned to play songs by ear, so he would hear it, learn it, play it.
The music history that flowed through that dude's head—he picked up songs from so many other performers who brought their own mental library of different times, struggles, regions. He heard the music and stored them (many of those recordings make up the background textures of this week's episode).
For more information on Henry Reed, check out the Library of Congress collection. And I should mention, the guy that recorded Reed was folklorist and fiddler, Alan Jabbour. A pretty special dude in his own right. (I also weaved in a bit of dialogue of Reed, Reed's wife Nettie, and Jabbour, so if you hear talking, that's them).
And let’s end it there.
Maybe allow some worries to dwindle today (especially if you have no capacity to fix them).
Henry Reed did exactly that when he and his wife lost their home to fire in the 30's. Reed said, “Well, Nettie, we haven't lost everything, because we still have our health.”
Take care, y’all.

Isaias remnants! Sit inside a backyard shed, riding out the remnants of Isaias (portions recorded this past Saturday) with some added textures and notes. Whether you're studying, working, reading, sleeping, or unwinding after a long day, this immersive, ambient soundscape provides the perfect background. 
Ignore the world.
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I will not recount the tales of old storms. No, I would like to talk about poetry. I don’t like poetry. Every cell in my body wants to scream when someone starts audibly performing a poem. I would rather listen to 911 dispatch calls—cringe, unguarded, desperate… miserable. Still better than performed poetry. 
I’m worried the person won’t be able to land the plane on their prose—and will be forced to witness earnestness colliding with YOURPOEMSUCKS. Germans have a word for acute embarrassment on someone else’s behalf: Fremdschämen. And that is what I have for spoken word artists.
And to be honest, the poem aversion isn’t entirely random to tropical remnants. (So you are recounting tales of old storms?) Look—when Isaias hit this past weekend, I saw a squirrel fighting the elements for a discarded pizza crust. It reminded me of a summer storm on Martha’s Vineyard (2006, I think?)—a storm that hit days after I absolutely bombed a poetry reading. 
It was the mid-aughts. I had seen a note in the Gazette about a poetry reading at a local coffeeshop. And like the hero of a movie—I signed the **** up. I was convinced my fifty-page opus would wow.
The coffeehouse had a patchwork of mismatched, living-room-style chairs. Random old photos of other people's families hung on the walls. The lights were low, the room felt artsy, and folks were having a good time. The other poets had ranged from decent to good. (Wait until the ambience gentlemen grabs the mic—LIKASHOT!!)
I confidently strode to “the stage,” whipped around. And then the sea of eyes hit me. I started, “my poem is titled The Divine Comedy Part II.”
Laughter.
I spluttered, sniffled out six lines, then settled into a better rhythm. That’s when I realized how many swears I’d decorated my stanzas with.
“Krice-sakes, man,” came a muffled voice from the darkness.
Immediate tunnel vision. I continued a few more lines, trying to replace the swears with new words—imagine the Guitar Hero interface but instead of flaming circles it was F-bombs.
Then I was walking, my body already halfway through its escape routine before I realized what I was doing.
A few gasps.
A lady in glasses nearby muttered, “Oh!” and that reaction was enough to snap me from my spiral. I abruptly returned to the stage. “Thank you… I'm done.”
...To call it a smattering of applause would be generous. I hadn't earned it anyway. The lady in glasses tapped me on the way back to my seat. “Takes a lot of guts to get up there.”
“Thank you,” I said, and then sank faaaaar into the chair.
The woman in glasses quietly rose, thumbing through a few loose pages. She chose one and started to shift, then plopped it back down and pulled one from her back pocket with a nervous giggle. Swept up her cup in a smooth motion, sipped, then headed to the stage.
Then slipped while facing us, almost teetering over, “Wooph—just learned to walk this week, folks.” 
Laughs.
She beamed back, searching until finding my eyes. “What’d I say about needing guts?” Laughs from crowd again, with notes of assent. She stood a moment, a tiny pause to let the jocularity pass—and then absolutely murdered every other poem read that night. About a ****ing squirrel that lived in her backyard.