Life Returns

What is Around You (Life Returns) by plurgid Rain. Holy crap, we finally got some! The heat wave was completely brutal, with temperatures topping 110 day after day for almost 3 weeks on end.

Our upstairs air conditioning unit couldn't  keep up, which is something I've actually never witnessed before. It wasn't broke, it was spitting out plenty cold air, but the temp upstairs never got over 85 or so, and the damn thing just ran non-stop for days on end. I'm rather terrified of my next utility bill.

We started getting little 10 minute afternoon showers about three days ago. It's amazing how resilient life is. After the blasting we took over the past month, literally everything was dead: lawns, shrubs, birds, insects, even weeds ... completely lifeless. It was as if the entirety of North Alabama was turning into a desert before our very eyes. Once water returned (even trivial amounts of it), life sprang back like nature disengaged a pause button.

Now it's pouring rain for the second whole day in a row. The birds outside my window have returned to their nest in our roof top, our lawn is emerald green and temperatures have returned to very comfortable mid 70's / low 80's. That and people are playful again. Brutal heat just pounds any sort of friskiness right out of you like wringing water from a dishrag.

To my amazement, Victoria (pictured above) took an interest in my audio-geekery last weekend and suggested going on a "sound safari" to Monte Sano. This is completely out of character for her new "disaffected sullen teenager" persona, so I mean hell yes, I took her up on it! Keep in mind, this was before we got any big rain, just the little spits of scattered 5 minute showers here and there, so there were bugs and birds and neat sounds like that but the "waterfall" (sort of the main attraction) was literally less than a dripping faucet.

The Monte Sano "waterfall"

That didn't stop us from getting some really badassed sounds though, and from having a pretty good Daddy/Daughter bonding thing.

The fact that the waterfall was more of a drip was actually serendipitous. We were able to climb up into the  cavern that's normally behind the water and mic up the drips echoing into the massive stone space.

there were many thousands more

We also ran into a family of long-legged spiders. I say "family", though they must have numbered in the thousands. Victoria unknowingly put her hand right in their nest, which is how we found them. She must have jumped 10 feet in the air! Good stuff. We caught a few of them in a picture, but by the time we got our wits together enough to get the camera out, 90% of them had scurried off.

So ... what'd I make out of all this? Well ... not much ... yet. More samples for the stockpile, that I'm sure will be useful at some point. I did start to put together a little droney sound collage, which I think is going to end up being an intro, outro or interlude thing in a larger track. This is the track posted at the top, tentatively titled "what is around you" (a phrase Victoria uses do describe environmental droney environmental ambient stuff). Possibly this will have something to do with Azure Sky ... not really sure with that. I must have 10 completely different mixes on that idea so far ... it can go so many different ways, which is of course ... the sign of a really good idea.