Man Vs. Nature, Go! War! Now!

When I set out to do this drift I had in my mind two rules: 1. No sounds of running water 2. No sounds of just traffic going by. But the fact is that I started off my drift on a bridge, and having both running water AND traffic going by! That was just too good to resist. I don't mean to post this as any kind of serious recording masterwork. I simply included it with my others because the microphone set up was the most interesting. One mic was pointed towards the street, while the other hung down off the bridge facing towards the water. The result is the river in the left ear and traffic in the right. Mother nature in the left corner, man made wonder in the right corner. Each weigh 180 pounds and it's all muscle minus however much bones, organs, and blood vessels weigh. They both float like butterflies and sting like swarms of like-minded bees!
Listen To The Epic Clash

Oh, What A World, What A World.

My drift took me through a playground. As my strategery explained to me I needed to go left, but as my eyes explained to me there was no left, just a right and a straight on through the playground. In the playground I found a merry-go-round, which apparently is one of those nouns that describes itself perfectly. I attempted to mic the sound of the merry-go-round, but failed quite miserably. Not only was I having a hard time getting it to keep going round, it simply didn't sound merry at all. I decided that even if it was winter, I was not about to subject anyone to the sounds of a dismayed-go-round. So I found a swingset, and listened to it swinging back and forth. As I recorded, some youth of the nation passed by reciting their usual rhetoric. I found that the sounds of their conversation very suitably juxtaposed the childlike innocence of my rusty swingset. Also there was a kickin' bass line in the background.
Listen To The Kickin' Bass Riff Here

Hey! That's The Sound My Heart Makes!

Gentlemen, in my travels I have come upon many an aluminum can thrown down upon a street corner; perhaps out of spite, perhaps due to alcohol consumption, perhaps because the guy was a douche and didn't notice that there was a garbage can like five feet away, I mean COME ON, Really?! This isn't biodegradable it's full of Red Bull! What if a spider got into it, huh? Then we'd have flying spiders. I just don't want to live in that world man. So don't litter. For anyone who wanted a moral, there you go. And now to my point. On this particular walk when I saw that aluminum can thrown down upon the ground I didn't get angry or fantasize about flying spiders surrounding hummer dealerships; I simply crushed it, and recorded its destruction. Musician Ezra Furman once wrote "my rule of thumb: the world is all aluminum." I'm not sure what he meant by that, but were the world all aluminum, this is what death would sound like.
Listen To The Apocalypse!

Did Someone Just "Shh!" Me?

Near the end of my walk I came across an old building on Humboldt Street. The front door was open, and were this a children's story I would have walked in and eaten their food and simply because the people who lived there were actually bears would not have justified my breaking and entering, or my stealing. However, this is not a children's story, and bears don't live in houses. So I simply went up to the front door and captured the sound of it swaying slowly back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Don't you love how those words feel like the movement they describe? I certainly do. I also love cake, which I've really gotten a craving for lately. Damn, I've gotten off track.
Listen To Something I Most Likely Just Described

Frozen Plastic Fingers Seen From The Inside-Out

My strategy, as it became clear immediately, was not going to take me down a lot of roads I knew. True I am an "out-of-towner" if you will, but I can get around just fine. But the point of this walk was not to get around but to be around and, therefore, I became lost very quickly. You may ask "lost in relation to where? Your destination? You don't have one." Well that question was rhetorical and I didn't appreciate it at all. Anyway I came upon a construction street, which is a lot like a construction site except that it's unclear what's being constructed and generally there's just a lot of tubes and a bulldozer lying around. So I did what seemed natural and stuck my hand in a tube and hit the outside to feel for, well, whatever it would feel like. It felt awesome, by the way. But it sounded better. So I placed my microphones inside and let loose on the piping. I floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee if a bee could sting more than once before losing its stinger and dying (had Mr. Ali researched his metaphors more thoroughly perhaps we would all be saying, "I float like a butterfly and sting like a swarm of like-minded bees"). When I hit harder some ice crystals could be heard falling off the inside of the pipe. And that's the story of how I set the ice free from it's plastic prison.
Listen To My Triumph Here

Swirling Airplane Dreams, Or Your Mind On Drugs In A Vacuum Cleaner

A school building to my left caught my attention. My bionic ears alerted me to an electronic buzzing, and my blue eyes directed me towards a large fenced in machine. I tried to capture the sound, but found that the drone was simply that, a drone, and not a very interesting one. However the sense of touch came to my rescue as five feet away was a vent blowing wildly; the true origin of the sound. I took my microphones and put them in various positions looking for the best place to keep them. As I did this it became clear that the best place to keep them was everywhere, which seemed strangely philosophical. So I swirled them round and round about the vent, for nature favors movement and works in circles, and who am I to go against mother nature?
Listen

Strategery

For my first drift along the streets of Milwaukee I attempted to use a walking strategy that would leave me lost and bewildered. My plan was to simply start off walking east on North Street near Cambridge, take my first left, my first right, and my second left, repeat and along the way collect interesting sounds I heard. I would walk for as long as possible and then call a friend for a Google map home. If my friend did not answer I would most likely just have followed my own strategy backwards. However, as fate had it, my strategy led me in a rather large, intricate web that ended right back where it started. And I thought I had no sense of direction.