A field recorder — field recordist? — in England happened upon a light infrastructural tonality of interest, taped it, and shared the resulting audio online. The individual, named Andy, who noted it on a forum recently, describes the incident as follows: “Stumbled across an aircon unit and fridge harmonising together in the Sainsbury’s at York Railway Station. Placed my Zoom H5 in the fridge next to some milkshakes and hit record. Bought a meal deal.” This recording isn’t Andy’s first from York Railway Station. At the website where the track is shared, two others appear nearby, one from later that same year, 2023, and one from the year prior. The website is aporee.org, which is sort of like if freesound.org crossbred with Google Maps. The adjacent recordings are evident on the satellite map page, each marked by a red circle. As for the site’s homepage, it is a textual heat map of recent uploads.
And Andy is right about the recording. The naturally occurring drone — well, “naturally” may be stretching it — is captivating, both transparent and insistent. It’s a fine recording of the sort of sound that can feel either like a fleeting presence or a claustrophobic one. I can’t seem to embed it, so click through to the website to listen. If it doesn’t pop up immediately, click on the leftmost of the three red circles. Of course, there may be more such red circles in the future, should Andy return to the location and hear something of interest.