A cold night in Texas

It’s the middle of the night in Texas, and this field recording seems more like a piece of sound design from a sci-fi movie than a straightforward recording.

But what you’re listening to is the sound of droning fridges cooling a supermarket, while a gentle undercurrent of music lends a strangely sinister edge beneath the mechanical pulses.

Recordist Conor Walker says:

“The recording takes place at a corporate supermarket in North Austin. The workers in the produce department are stocking vegetables under a bed of Tejano music. The drone is pouring out of the produce refrigerators.”

For the reimagined version, we’ve layered in some string lines to open the piece, followed by some gently undulating synths that map against the fridge drones, giving the whole thing a healthily alien feel, as if a spacecraft has come down to claim these fridges for their own.

City version:

Memory version: