By Genre: Field Recordings, Comedy
Favorite Tracks: N/A
The best films focused on music, stand-up, or theater of any kind tend to focus on the intimacy of the green room hangout, the rhythm of the artist’s life, and the romance of the pre-show nothingness—sound checks, eating, killing time. Visually, these things read as electric nostalgia, a sort of second-hand celebration of the way creative people lived and were, as opposed to what fans wished they were. The question of how one might do this on a record is a fascinating one, and if Fred Armisen is anyone to go by, the answer is to record sound effects from the life you know as someone artistic—be it a European elevator, or the sound of glass breaking, or a couple talking at the airport (with an assist from the truly underrated and talented Rikki Lindhome).
The 103 effects on display across Armisen’s latest project, 100 SOUND EFFECTS, are themselves beautifully recorded, capturing a spectrum of awkward attempts to turn the cheesy into the cool via musical alchemy, the kind that anyone who has passed by a music store near Christmas knows well. Each sound effect is a pocket universe that helps us understand Armisen a bit more clearly, if imperfectly. A car door opens, for example, but the mystery of whether it’s a hybrid or all-terrain classic gas guzzler remains. We listen to a drum check for a concert, and also get the beauty of hearing Armisen play a venue manager kicking the crowd out while trying to clean up—each a familiar part of Armisen’s life and journey as a punk drummer and guitarist.
Even when the record gets more abstract, Armisen’s life is clearly driving the work. When we get to camping sound effects, one track is a vapid conversation between Armisen and friend Tim Heidecker. While there’s an obtuseness to the fact that it’s more complicated than a simple sound effect, it’s easy to see that banal chats over the camping promise of “getting a break” are a staged part of Armisen’s social life. It’s mundane, perhaps, but it reminds the listener Armisen is a person, and passes time like the rest of us the best he can.
On the alternate side of this is the section focused on haunted house sound effects. Armisen is a great champion of the spooky, from the brilliant LOS ESPOOKYS on HBO Max, to confirmation in a Howard Stern interview that, at least at one point in time, his house was decorated with horror memorabilia and Halloween decor year-round. It means something, then, that Armisen gets these effects right. What we’re gifted with are ghostly warbles and demonic-voiced tracks that would be brilliant matches for anyone running their own haunted house, or trying to create media that harkens back to the days of eerier animated Halloween fare. Here, Armisen again shows us who he is and what matters to him when considering the passions that shape his life.
A fundamental question may be whether or not the record is funny, as it is an involved project from a singular comic mind. There are two answers for this, depending on your degree of proximity to comedy concepts. There are small laughs in some of the tracks themselves, obvious jokes such as when Armisen says, “That’s a good one,” when getting a campfire going, making fun of the things we hear idiots say when doing low-competence things socially. But there’s also the abstract comedy at play; Armisen is an exacting comedian who dials into the frequencies of human annoyance in a way that is amazing, but that can also read as intangible for general listeners. For those who can already dial in, the inherent concept of spending this much time making a sound effects record for people in 2025 is comedy at its finest.
Whether or not one wants to engage the record as something to use in their own work, as a certain kind of comedy exercise, or a means to understand Arnisen, his brilliance and generosity are on full display.
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