Michael Siegel - Sounds of the Office 1964

Folkways website says, "This mysterious album opens with banging and creaking and could be mistaken for a minimalist sound piece. It is in fact the sounds of an office from 1964. Rustling papers, drawers closing, typing and footsteps are just a few of the sounds heard on this album." While field recordings archive may be nothing special, these days, they probably wouldn't exist without records like "Sounds Of The Office", originally released in 1964. These are just normal, everyday sounds of an office environment, but one from 50 years ago. Taken out of context, an interesting phenomena occurs; it becomes a piece of musique concrete sound sculpture, a surreal tapestry of hissing industrial buzzes and clangs and disembodied conversations, which is further exacerbated by the facts that most of these machines, and probably most of these people, are dead and moldering, transforming the set into an industrial ghost dance on par with Eraserhead. As usual, it's also packaged with Folkways ridiculously awesome graphic design. Listening to Sounds Of The Office will forever change the way you hear the world around you, the way you view your home and work, making life 10x more surreal; the hallmark of good psychedelia. For burgeoning concretists, or if you happen to be running a Mad Men live action role playing campaign, get this platter! And then move on to records like "The Sounds Of Medicine", "The Sounds Of The Sea", and "The Sounds Of The Junkyard".

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