uncommon ambience

thereelray
  • 0.0 (0)
  • ARTS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

Ambient noise podcast. White noise, gray noise, machine noise, fans, ambient movie homages, and nature. This is a place for folks who want to listen to something without a narrative, news, or exciting new material from Nas. Ignore the world.

  1. Carolina Wind (Bomb Cyclone) and Sporadic Notes — Whirlwinds for Anxious Nights

    5D AGO

    Carolina Wind (Bomb Cyclone) and Sporadic Notes — Whirlwinds for Anxious Nights

    Bomb cyclone over North Carolina… Ambience. This week’s episode covers the major coastal storm as heard from the coastal plains Carolina (i.e., my twin’s house). Her recording (thank you!) captured wind, snow, and birds sheltering nearby. I also filled out the recording with added notes and sounds (I’m really into ambience with non-music motifs). And as everyone who has followed this podcast should know, I am a fan of fans. (We’re starting with fans?) One distant summer night in Myrtle Beach, I sat bolt upright fast enough to catch the sound of an explosion in its negative phase. Light-headed and feeling each beat of my heart pulsating through my eyes and ears, my brain trying to re-engage consciousness.   I looked around in the dark. Ghostly echoes of thunder washed over me. The wind picked up and lashed raindrops into the window. A flash of light ignited the room, and I was staring into the pale visage of a little girl’s face, wide-eyed. I screamed. This was the thunderstorm that ruined me for thunderstorms. I experienced the eye of Hurricane Hugo (Kershaw County, not Charleston), and my memories aren’t as vivid of that hurricane as they are of that brief, terrifying Myrtle storm. I can remember everything from the moment I was ripped from my dreams to my father plugging in a large box fan next to my bed. After recovering from the face-flashing jumpscare, it was my twin staring at me—we summoned the courage to wander down the hall of the efficiency motel room to where my parents slept. We ripped them out of their sleep and beckoned them to look out the windows.  The sheer unsettlement of the night sky—Do something. A blinding flash enveloped us in white. And just before the collection of sounds that make up thunder hit my ear, I swear I heard a sizzle rip by first. Sparks fell across the street from a power line. I backed away from the windows, reeling—the room’s oven flashed and sparked with small tendrils of electricity. I shouted, “The oven’s on fire,” because I had no idea how to describe what I was seeing. “The oven is not on fire,” my mother said, furious. And I can understand why; if she were writing this podcast description about the experience, it would be: waking to children screaming, a massive white light filling the room, a shattering thunderclap, and her son shouting “fire!” “Sometimes lightning can sneak in through the wires,” my father explained after sorting out what I had seen. And I was like, “Wait—it can get inside?!” urgently gesticulating toward the windows and the flashing forks of electric death. This is why I sleep with noise at night—preferably rushing wind, whether electric or naturally created. To drown out the possibility of hearing thunder. Essentially, all of what I have written so far can be boiled down to my trying to conjure a title for this week’s episode. I wanted to offer howling winds as anxiety relief. And my beloved wife interjected that I should offer calm winds for anxiety, as people might not feel calmed by rushing wind. And I was like, “CALM WINDS DON’T CALM ME!” The argument eventually ended with accusations that I never do the dishes. Happy Valentine’s Day! (Oh no wait that’s next week)

  2. Snow Drift Among Snow Drifts | Snowfall with Musical Drift for Focus & Sleep

    JAN 31

    Snow Drift Among Snow Drifts | Snowfall with Musical Drift for Focus & Sleep

    Snow and perceptual drift is this week’s show. This episode includes the heaviest moments of precipitation (for us, early in the morning 1/25), which dumped white stuff all over my backyard and 56.1% of the contiguous United States. We wound up with about 10 inches. As I write this, I have just finished cursing about the school cancelling our last chance to push the kids out the door this week. It has been freezing and there’s snow everywhere — so I get it. However, the kids have been home starting fights and wanting Panera for lunch all week. I’m done. And the constant melt and refreezing has left us gingerly moving about outside. I already slipped and fell off the back deck trying to wrestle with bins for trash pickup. I landed directly on my *** slid down a few steps and into hardened snow at the foot of the stairs. I looked around to see if anyone had witnessed.  It’s embarrassing falling in front of people — over the summer, I hit a soft shoulder with my bike, trying to put my feet down to stop myself going down a hill toward the banks of a pond. I flipped head over heels into a barrel roll in front of no fewer than four people. And I’m getting to the age where people aren’t saying, “Look at that doofus.” Literal Boy Scouts have tried to rescue me — like, guys, you can’t help me, I fall off of **** a lot. I fell off a moving train once. So getting to the mailbox over the icy sidewalks has been a challenge. Does anyone else rap to themselves when they are concentrating? Not freestyle — that would be absurd. No, calling upon the great verses of hip hop. I recite Inspectah Deck’s “Movin’ on a ***** with the speed of a centipede…” while surreptitiously eating candy with my kids in the other room. There are verses in my brain I call upon when I especially need to concentrate. As with icy conditions, I recall one of the slowest, most pedestrian lines in hip hop: Eazy-E’s verse on Foe tha Love of $. And no shade to Eazy-E — he was a legend… who had a few pedestrian lines (I’m using pedestrian again, as I don’t want in on any rap beefs). Eazy-E slowly raps, “So I dash, I duck, and I hide behind a tree,” to hide from the police (while working as a street pharmacist). It’s pretty simple stuff. Look, I’m an Eazy-E fan. I played Merry Mutha******  Xmas every December on my college radio Christmas show in central Vermont. When Daz rapped, “**** B.G. Knocc Out and every ****** down with him,” I knew who B.G. Knocc Out was — I had B.G. Knocc Out (and Dresta’s) cassette; the duo were featured heavily on Eazy-E’s Str8 off tha Streetz of ************ Compton. And that album has “Just Tah Let U Know,” my fave Eazy track. BTW: lewd — lots of swears, Mom (don’t click any links).

  3. Dispatch Game Episode 1 Ambience: First Start Screen for Sleep or Villainy

    JAN 24

    Dispatch Game Episode 1 Ambience: First Start Screen for Sleep or Villainy

    This week’s episode is based on the ⁠video game Dispatch⁠ (⁠ADHOC⁠) our first game homage at uncommon ambience. Before each episode (level) of the game Dispatch there is a mildly animated ambient perspective. For instance, episode two of Dispatch shows a lobby, a mostly static scene, and you have buttons for “Play,” “Settings,” “Extras,” and “Exit Game” at the bottom. The ambient experience for each episode is what I live for — a liminal space to inhabit (that loops seamlessly every few minutes). Recently, I used the late-night office start screen for sleep (episode 3). Probably not ideal for my Steam Deck working all night as a noise maker. So here is the value proposition: I can make the ambient experience longer and in podcast form (with my own sounds; this is homage, not theft). If you are not familiar, Dispatch is an absolutely charming (lewd) gamified choose-your-adventure cartoon with occasional button-mashing. Set in a despotic Los Angele-ish world of superheroes and supervillains. The heroing comes with a price tag for the powerless. If you need rescuing or have a donut shop to protect, ⁠you better have a subscription with SDN⁠ (Superhero Dispatch Network). And that’s how we get to “Dispatch.” In the game, you are a beaten hero forced to serve as a team leader in an emergency call center. Instead of calling 911 for fire or public safety, civillians call superheroes with capes or an angsty invisible lady who can seriously throw hands. To have a subscription to a superhero service in a world of war crimes and masked men kidnapping people off our streets — well, that would be amazing. I would love to task the Blonde Bomber with chucking a few doofuses into orbit. But ⁠Alan Moore might caution⁠ my bringing fantasy with me into the real world — pretending I have Professor X mind melting rays for that ******* who ran the red, might deliver a brief (meaningless) sensation of victory. It’s less than self-indulgence. Moore spoke about the dangers of grown folks watching Batman films — a just crusader swooping in with morals and a Batarang, delivering accountability to the powerful. The danger is we accept these fantasies, of independent-actors fixing systemic problems and not interrogate our responsibilities in an unfair world.  But ****, I wouldn’t look askance if the future handed us comic book technology, especially if it comes with ⁠Scud the Disposable Assassin vending machines⁠. I would go for the “Scud Lite” version, the robot that only beats the ⁠“**** out of somebody.”⁠ Ahhh, escapism. BTW, I don’t know how Alan Moore would take Dispatch. Dispatch was released as a game and comic book, at the same time. Superheroes existing in a more realistic universe was Moore's lane (⁠Watchmen⁠, ⁠V for Vendetta⁠), but he wasn’t fond of comics being made into films, especially his. He wanted to show off what comics could do that films can’t.  I would love to know Moore’s thoughts on Zack Snyder’s ⁠chorus of the Aquaman⁠. This is where I’m ending it. I had a bunch more paragraphs that built from a “If safe were profitable we would already be safe” — and join me on the tambourine line! That somehow led to my praising the LL Cool J ⁠Mr. Smith album⁠ which has been unfairly eclipsed by ⁠one of its singles⁠, to landing on the track ⁠“Life As…”⁠ being on both Mr. Smith and the Street Fighter soundtrack, and finally to a Street Fighter advertisement from ⁠The Source Magazine (April ’95)⁠ featuring a comic that concedes the movie is ****, but the album is dope (plus ⁠MC Hammer / Deion Sanders⁠). AND… Tell Tale Walking Dead… I was ruthlessly mocked by coworkers in 2013 for saving Doug over Carley the TV Reporter and that I somehow had a grudge against news people. Gawd Doug sucked, but he looked to be closer to immediate peril — Carley had a gun! How was I supposed to know Carley was out of ammo. Shoehorned it, baby! [[episode graphic made in photoshop]]

  4. Vermont Off-Campus Party Ambience for Sleep — Chill, Edgy, New England 1990s Nostalgia

    JAN 17

    Vermont Off-Campus Party Ambience for Sleep — Chill, Edgy, New England 1990s Nostalgia

    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.

  5. PTAC Ambience: Cozy Hotel Room with Gushing Warm Air for Sleep, Relaxation, and Focus

    JAN 10

    PTAC Ambience: Cozy Hotel Room with Gushing Warm Air for Sleep, Relaxation, and Focus

    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.”

  6. Soothing River Ambience & Tambouras for Sleep, Rest, and Calm

    JAN 5

    Soothing River Ambience & Tambouras for Sleep, Rest, and Calm

    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.

  7. Southern Vermont Winter Ambience: Snow, Wind, and Late-Night NYE Musings

    2025-12-31

    Southern Vermont Winter Ambience: Snow, Wind, and Late-Night NYE Musings

    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.

  8. Burger Time at White Castle | Appreciation Ambience for Relaxation & Sleep

    2025-12-21

    Burger Time at White Castle | Appreciation Ambience for Relaxation & Sleep

    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 ****.

See All (217)

About

Ambient noise podcast. White noise, gray noise, machine noise, fans, ambient movie homages, and nature. This is a place for folks who want to listen to something without a narrative, news, or exciting new material from Nas. Ignore the world.

Information

  • Creator
    thereelray
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    217
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © thereelray
  • Show Website
    uncommon ambience