NYPL: Missing Sounds Of New York
Remember Spring of 2020? Sorry for bringing it up. New York, a city defined by its noise, went into lockdown. It was quiet… a little too quiet… even for those who have historically championed ‘SILENCE!’: The New York Public Library. To show The NYPL is For Every New Yorker, we wrote, produced, and released an album of the Missing Sounds of New York to comfort those in quarantine at home and abroad.
The album earned an insane amount of organic press, 300,000 streams in the first week, had listeners in every country, inspired a Daily Show parody, a NYT interactive article and got me (finally) listed on Wikipedia.
The tracks were assembled from scratch, utilizing a mix of archival sounds and crowdsourcing. From carefully hand-crafting foley that replicated a dive bar’s heavy front door slamming shut to asking friends and family to mimic iconic NYC accents - like the “GET CHA BEER HERE” concessions people at a ball game - it was a project made remotely and entirely from memory.
The New York Times put us in print!
Over 100 New Yorkers and 10 different languages are featured on the album, meticulously layered together with sound effects and ambient noise to recreate details only the city’s inhabitants could recognize.
The Daily show parodied us.
Made at Mother NY with Erik Norin, Emily Sheehan, Kim Chavez and Michael Coffman.