I reckon at least a handful of y’all have been to the South Lake Union Guitar Center, and, as it’s a shop of testable music gear, it’s often filled with the RANDOM unconnected sounds of said gear being tested. Turns out, experimental sound maker Noah Wall walked into the Manhattan GC with sneaky microphones on his ears and recorded the ambient sounds of the gear punters were punting.
Some cliques gather in the acoustic guitar room and the occasional couple show off for one another but this place is mostly loners. Trying out a guitar or amp or whatever, they probably didn’t come here to jam with others. But the din has an ensemble effect and the unintentional group is abiding some unspoken rules. There’s a general respect in terms of volume, and sometimes strangers play in the same key and seemingly with one another.
Wall has sequenced his field-recordings from GC into the shape of an album called, surprise, Live at Guitar Center. He added nothing—no beats or effects—to the recordings, so the songs, er, tracks, are the bare ambient found collages of sound collisions that he collected. Besides the occasional jab of a phone page, nothing really stands out; you can hear talking, phones ringing, and instruments being played—all at a relatively even volume. I would’a never thought to consider the ambient noise like this, when captured and played in a different context—my desk—could be considered music. While it is interesting to hear this noise, for me, by the end of the album it felt like white noise rather than some kinda high-concept piece; I doubt I could listen to Live at Guitar Center routinely.