Found Sounds: Machine dream
Found Sounds is a SoundCloud community feature focusing on some of the most weird and wonderful sounds that can be found on SoundCloud. Count on new installments with some of our favorite sounds each Tuesday!
SoundCloud is social, which means it’s a great way to share your sounds with other human beings, but who says the subject of the sounds have to be human themselves? In fact, there are plenty of great machine sounds on SoundCloud — instances where an intrepid recorder has turned the mic on something not found in nature, and ended up with some cool recordings for it. Let’s look at some of those today!
The first sound, titled simply “Floors”, comes courtesy of a user who goes by VJ Opie and is based in Paris, France. It was recorded with the SoundCloud iPhone app, and you can hear some sort of monstrous machine being used on floors. The track artwork looks like it shows the source of the sound, so if you’re a bit handier than your humble correspondent, you may be able to identify the machine in question. If you can, shout it out in the comments!
Some of the great machine sounds online aren’t even exceptional machines — in fact some of them come from machines most of us use all the time. Take, for example, Damian Jaroszonek’s surprisingly suspenseful recording of an ATM dispensing cash. (Note, too, that this one’s simply called “Cash”. Maybe something about the machine as subject that lends itself to such a brief description?) If you’re intrigued by this sound, you should check out the musical track “Banko” that uses these samples, made by Damian under the name Zupa Inferno.
Stepping back to the meta-machines: London Sound Survey, the source of all kinds of great recordings around London, provides a recording of the buzz and hum around the Cooper Mill Lane electricity station in London. The contrast between the mechanical hum of the station and the nature sounds on the nearby river Wandle is striking. Check it out!
Electricity station coronal discharge: headworn DPA 2006C mics by London Sound Survey
Finally, where would we be without the common machine called the microphone? It sounds crazy to record a microphone — and it’s not usually a good idea — but it can occasionally be done to great effect if the feedback can be harnessed properly. Check out pipmics‘ recording called “FeedbackIsOverrated” to get an idea of the cool bleeps and bloops you can get out of a microphone eating its own proverbial tail!
FeedbackIsOverrated by pipmics
That’s all for this week’s Found Sounds! Tune in next week for more crazy sounds from the ‘Cloud.
photo: Machine de type Gramme / Frédéric BISSON / CC BY 2.0