Michael Siegel – The Sounds Of The Office / The Sounds Of The Junk Yard
Label: Creel Pone – CP 000.11
Format: CDr, Unofficial Release
Country: US
Genre: Non-Music
Style: Field Recording
Legendary Folkways release! (Mint / New)
This was the 11th title in the ca. 2003 Proto Creel Pone program, collecting both of Michael Siegel’s two 1964 (!?) Folkways releases, “The Sounds of the Office” (FX 6142) & “The Sounds of the Junk Yard” (FX 6143).
I’d long been fascinated by the Tony Schwarz-end of the Folkways spectrum (check the first “Sides” disc of Creelpolation 2) and these two “Mise-en-Scene” titles (complete with pitch-perfect liner notes encapsulating the raw documentation-aspects of the two LPs, ages before Gregg “Neil Hamburger” Turkington caught up with the whole “Boring Field Recordings” ethos maybe 2/3 decades later via his “Sounds of the Convenience Store” & “Sounds of Adult Bookshops” series) are almost too perfect in their channeling of the seemingly banal into a riot of tape-gained everyday sounds & extremely harsh scrap-metal shrieks & explosions. I remember hearing The New Blockaders’ “Changez Les Blockeurs” for the first time & thinking that, while of course it’s the canonic example of “Industrial Music’s” embrace of the minutiae of everyday mechanization, that it didn’t hold a candle to “Junk Yard” in its overblown, gained blasts (I’d also read somewhere that this was one of Evan Parker’s favorite records, and somehow now that make perfect sense).
This vaunted C.P. edition collects both titles in all of their glories (the “Textured” booklet is a nice touch) complete with two separate inserts covering both booklets (the descriptions of the events unfolding in sound read like poetry).
Tracklist
The Sounds Of The Office
1 Time Clock
2 Coffee Break
3 Dictation And Transcription
4 Letter Opening
5 Heat Copyer (Thermofax) And Stapling
6 Coffee Break
7 Old Electric Typewriter
8 Adding Machine
9 Writing Checks, And Check Protector
10 Manual Typewriter
11 Telephone And Intercom
12 Pop Bottle Machine
13 Calculator
14 Plastic Laminator
15 Bookkeeping Machine
16 Coffee Break
17 Addressograph
18 Postage Meter And Envelope Sealer
19 Time Clock
20 The Office On A Busy Day
The Sounds Of The Junk Yard
21 Acetylene Torch, Cutting Apart An Automobile Engine.
22 Loading Pick-Up Truck By Hand With 400 Lb. Bales Of Aluminum Scrap. Hear Them Slide Along The Truck.
23 Removing Two Bales At A Time From Truck With Fork-Lift, Inside Warehouse.
24 Loading Empty Fiber Drums On Pick-up Truck. (Only 15 Lbs. Each, But Noisier Than Above Because Of Metal Rims And Resonace.)
25 Aluminum Clips Being Dumped From Dump Truck.
26 Paper Baler.
27 Magnetic Crane.
28 Steel Saw Cutting Channel Iron In Two Pieces.
29 Alligator Shear.
30 Burning Out An Old Car.
31 Baling Aluminum Chips In Metal Baler.
32 Dump Truck Unloading Sheet Metal Scrap.
33 Magnetic Crane Loading Baler With Metal Sheets.
34 Hand Loading Metal Baler With Automobile Doors, Fenders, Steel Drums, Etc., And Baling.
