Aural Vacation MP3s

They take digital equipment on their world travels, so we can enjoy the field recordings from our cubicles. Among the latest weekly One-Minute Vacation tracks uploaded from various contributors to Aaron Ximm‘s quietamerican.org website are an evening in Barcelona, complete with street music (February 7), and of numerous boats all blowing their horns on the North Sea (January 24). Not everyone’s that hi-tech, as evidenced by a third entry (January 31): which documents a race-car rally, recorded on an answering machine via cell phone. If you’d like to extend your stay, there’s an additional five-minute version of the Scottish boating chorus, an annual tradition called “hogmanay.” Check ’em all out at quietamerican.org/vacation.html.