The Music

by Matthew Herbert

  Softly now: the bubbling of fish tanks; inside, drowsy turtles piled on top of each other. A vast vat of oil coming to temperature in a factory recorded with a hydrophone inside. Still quietly, a huge container ship slowly turns up its engines, ready to leave. A kettle backstage at a crematorium boils and can’t turn itself off. Inside every dishwasher working at this moment we hear sloshing and churning recorded from the inside. A hook and float is cast into a still pond. A continuous pouring of wine. Someone has dug up all the lids of takeaway cups of coffee or tea buried in the ground in the nineties from a landfill site near you. Barbecues are being lit, barbecues are being thrown away. A colossal clatter of pans from restaurants in Sri Lanka; many people are furiously flipping and shuffling a hot wok right now on a stove. Someone’s hand slips on a cheese grater and grates through the skin on their knuckles instead. A barrel of beer from a lorry to a cellar. Workers are running through an orchard. Bones dropped on a tray. A hedgehog bites through dry cat food left outside. A pig bites on a peach stone. Chickens peck at grain in a metal feeder in the same rhythm as the banging-out of used coffee grinds in Brooklyn coffee shops. A man scrapes an unfinished bowl of organic porridge, honey and flax seed onto a compost heap. Trucks everywhere reversing up to landfill sites, emptying their guts into holes. And the dragging of chairs and tables across floors and carpets, and the tearing of napkins, and spilt water, and the crumpling of plastic cups, and the folding of paper plates. The clasping of hands for grace. A bolt through the head of a male calf. A single onion falls out of a shopping bag in a car park with a bonk.

  Someone on their own is snapping a large bar of chocolate in the dark. A home-delivery lorry out bringing food to a neighbour slams its door. A pizza delivery helmet lands on a warm pizza box. A cook slices through a finger. A strawberry picker is struggling to breathe by the side of a road. Over the top is layered the sound of a person who doesn’t know they are seriously ill yet, peeling back the blue plastic lid of a lunchbox. A milk bottle smashes on rough concrete. A machine for slicing ham switches on and comes to speed quite quickly. We hear the blade mechanism slide towards where the ham is clamped in place. It’s a short sound, but it’s enough for us to anticipate the sound that is coming – the metallic whizz of the circular blade losing its shine as it slices through breaded, salted flesh. Frozen mice are defrosting ready to be fed to a pet snake.

  In the distance we hear a short rung bell calling children in from the fields to eat and then a version of silence: an empty suburban supermarket on the edge of a typically sized Ukrainian town with its lights off. Except we realise there is a significant humming. The fridges and freezers are still on. It is unrecognisable yet familiar, a place in limbo, in mourning, in waiting – a magic place where every shelf produces every conceivable food you could want, regardless of the season, the country of origin or the distance travelled to get there. We need the whole place to hum for us to know it was once alive itself, to feel we can survive, and we listen to its unpleasant, discordant drone for some time. Something is changing, though; slowly we feel like we’re moving towards the fridges – maybe the one in the cold meats aisle – but in fact it is a fading-up of a fridge in another supermarket somewhere close by. Then, one by one, a single fridge from each supermarket within a ten-mile radius is added to the sound, sonically stacked on top of each other, placed in a location binaurally or simulated to represent its position on a map, one after another. The hum now is pretty loud, but we’ve only just got started. The radius is widened and every three seconds, using the criteria of distance – closest to the location of the original fridge, another fridge is added from another supermarket, and another, and another until every fridge in every supermarket that is on right now is heard on top of each other in a giant, violent, thuggish, bellicose chorus. We hear that sound at high volume for fifty seconds. Suddenly it stops. The sound of a lamb you may choose to eat or not to eat is currently grazing; we hear its teeth pulling and tearing the grass. Quietly it is augmented by the pulling-off of a lid of a yoghurt pot, black-cherry-flavoured, by a nun. An empty Snickers drink rolls to the right-hand side of a bus on the top floor. The sped-up rattling of shopping trolleys, separated in haste. The catch of a Kilner biscuit-jar lid being popped. A diabetic child with her ear near a bowl of Ricicles. The spit of cheap chicken on a long grill. A murderer’s last meal served in a plastic dish. A hurried can opener on a tin of own-brand chicken-flavoured cat food. A microwave ping, answered by however many microwaves are pinging right now in unison, mixed with tape delays and reverb. A brisk stirring of low-calorie sweetener in a cup of tea at the Foreign Office. A plate set firmly and unkindly on the floor. The hiss of the skin of an arm burned on an oven shelf. The fridges again, maxed out over the rattling of trolleys, a sub rumble throughout. The flip of a single pair of slippers; it is 3a.m. Flip, flip, flip. This is our metronome. All else is measured by this flip, flip, flip. The click of the snap of a photographer’s bag on his way back from a South American farm. The grinding of the teeth of a farm worker made to stand there and grin for a packaging image. The whack of a coconut on a head. Flip. The careful washing of chickpeas in a filthy stream. Flip. The potato-picking machine breaks down with a bang. Flip. A tiny excerpt of the laying of plates at a buffet for a driving instructors’ conference. Flip. The tank behind a greenhouse mixing a blend of water, chemicals and nutrients for the violently green basil plants next door. Flip. The pulling of weeds by a road in Yemen. Flip, thud. The noise of a truck driver sitting down on a toilet by a motorway. Flush. The miserable semi-din of orange lights inside Thanet Earth. Flip. A phone rings from Monsanto to fulfill a re-order. Flip, peel, pop, the stickering by hand of the specials stickers at the end of the day in a corner of a shop in Bergen. Flip. Running water into a duck pond. Bang: a dairy farmer throws files in a removals box. Bang: a gunshot over a field. Hush: the slaves on Thai fishing boats are sitting quietly, nearly silent, so we just hear the churn of the boat’s engine as it heads out to sea again. Two hundred chickens are stunned with electrodes, a new kind of noise they’ve not made before. The fearful flapping of 2,000 fish in a net resting on the bottom of a boat. Two hundred thousand pigs in gas chambers. The bodies of animals tumbling into bins. A van full of labourers chugs out fumes next to the café while they wait for the driver to finish his coffee. A metal spatula scrapes mince too vigorously off a Teflon pan. A lawyer is typing a lawsuit. Eggs being collected from metal-grilled trays for the mayonnaise in the tuna sandwich at the petrol station on the road to school. The rattle of tins of mints in handbags. The crates being loaded. The lorries arriving, the ships turning, the planes landing, water gushing through pipes. A bee is stuck inside the plastic sheeting of a polytunnel. At the same time a makeup artist for Gordon Ramsay gets a text message from her boyfriend during the taking of pictures for an advertising shoot. The squeak of the gate as it’s opened to let the cows pass on their last day in Herefordshire. The squeak is slowed down a lot and looped underneath the tiny sound of the pinning of hairnets in a factory.

  The sound of dripping water nearby but not inside the crude hut of the worker who is currently picking the fruit you’ll see in the shop next week. The sliding-back of a resealable top on a bag full of grated Red Leicester cheese by a nine-year-old boy. A timer goes off by a KFC frying station. A manager bites a crumbly wafer over his dessert on a date with the wine buyer. Plastic corks bobble en masse into landfill. An out-of-date packet of chapatis hits the bottom of a plastic bin. All the zips of all the packed lunch bags as their contents are about to be eaten. A Chorleywood bread-factory fire alarm goes off. The lumpen shudder of a hidden toy in a shaken cereal box. The sound of six beers in a cardboard sleeve hitting the bottom of the trolley. A lobster split in two down the middle with a sharp knife. The hidden jangle of a small, cheap, whisky bottle against loose change in someone’s pocket. A mic inside the crates and crates of bourbon in the back of a lorry on a ferry, pulling in, rattling furiously in time with the engine. The coffee-stall grinde
r, the coffee farmer coughing. The shuffle of a cashier’s feet under the table. The packing up of a local grocer for good. The simple dull thwack of frozen croissants on baking tins. The synthetic apricot-scented freshener squirting automatically in the toilet of a museum’s cafe. The purr of dialysis. The scanner of an in-store shopper, buying something for the online shopper, bleeps once. The felling of a rare tree, sped up. A passing of blood-red urine. A paper mill at full pelt mixed beneath. A bleep from the dialysis machine. Ink-making and printing. A half-full plastic water bottle forcefully kicked. A sewing-up of bruised flesh alongside the rapid breathing of a hidden migrant. The rows of hung haddock as they get dipped in dye and liquid smoke. The dinner lady trips over the chemo trolley. The ice-cream van reversing into a docking bay and hitting the side of a caravan by mistake. The throwing and unloading of frozen turkeys at dawn. The abattoir worker blowing on a hot chocolate on a break during the night shift. The out-of-breath shopper bending down to pick up a tin of meatballs in tomato sauce. The plastic tablecloth wiped free of crumbs. The gloop of caramel in a bowl over a pan of boiling water for the second time. But now everyone puking up alcohol. Millions of children at a birthday party about to eat sausage rolls at the same time. An insulin injection in the toilet at a diet-industry conference. The squeak of two polystyrene boxes rubbing against each other at Billingsgate. A cute pig squeal. A failed harvest of corn, cracking slightly in the heat. The spitting of burning butter in pans. A manufacturer has set out rows of tasting pots and we hear the sound of the sales agent washing their hands next door. An amputation. The daughter of an asparagus farmer in Peru is at the back of a small classroom flicking her teeth with a branded plastic pen. A wild pony bites on a discarded Pink Lady apple core on the side of a steep hill. A fisherman drops a large red string bag of whelks on the harbour wall, but it splits and spills its contents on the tarmac. Another tree felled for paper which will later be used for the menu of the nearest Indian restaurant, sped up at least double speed. As it hits the ground, a huge spray of pig shit from a waste lagoon onto fields. A huge bong again, this time from inside an empty oil tanker at a dock in Colombo as it’s about to refill and the pipe is connected. From this expanse of sound comes another: in Dubai, leftover noodles from the breakfast buffet at the Sofitel is scraped into a large black bin liner, the knife making a squeal against the porcelain as it does so. This screech is given a long reverb, mapped from an impulse response of an empty parliament building, and in it we can distantly hear chains along a dock, a carcass dragged along the floor, a bag of genetically modified potatoes pulled through a chip-shop kitchen, a buffalo hide through long grass, a shaking of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes into bowls, a vivid mechanical whisking of egg whites for a birthday pavlova in Vienna, a pulverising of gristle, a constant avalanche of brightly coloured wrapped sweets down a roller ramp towards a huge, wheeled crate, a sliding-off of plastic from several long baguettes at once, a continuous suction of blood, fluid and fat in a liposuction operation, a loud pouring of water like a sieve from the nets on the back of a fishing boat as it hauls in an illegal catch, a fan whirring, keeping lights cool above a table on which sits a perfect plastic curry, an apple-

  polishing machine in South Africa churning furiously, the continuous but gentle grinding of spices by hand in prison, two soon-to-be-peeled buckets of shrimp pulled along the floor by a child in a dust mask in Phuket, a giant combine harvester spilling commercially trademarked grain into a giant truck, rain on a tin roof on a shack on a farm, a continuous slice down the chest of a cow, any cow, the spraying of Calypso insecticide, a vacuum cleaner sucking up pistachio shells from underneath a table in Las Vegas, a suicide bomb exploding in a food market.

  A chef washes sinew off her hands. Air-sealed blocks of kebab meat in bags, punctured, releasing the air from inside with a sigh. Cans of soup falling from the top of a building and splitting open in sharp succession on the pavement. Bottle tops pinging off the top of imported beers and hitting the metal ducting above. Bakery tins crashing onto the empty metal sheets lower down. A bottle of Lucozade hurled through the window of a hospital. Aerosols of cheap cream are squirting in short, short stabs upwards. Frozen turkeys are melting in the heat from a supermarket fire, the plastic of their packaging moulding to the skins. Shelves collapse, crushing bags of organic dried fruit in small green pouches. Yoghurt starting to ferment, normalised, made loud. Pastry cracking open. Mould growing. A farmer slamming the phone down on a buyer. Many packets of dried grains trembling on a shelf in an earthquake, recorded from inside each packet. The angry pop of a lid off a glass jar of curdled vanilla cream. Lettuce washed and dragged through chlorine. All the batteries are leaking, burning. The splosh and thud of wellies through a field as a farmer’s daughter looks at a ruined crop of beetroot. Thousands of green potatoes bouncing unevenly down several flights of graffitied stairs. One or two empty hangers bumping into each other inside a makeshift wardrobe as a train goes overhead while a pot-washer cleans his teeth for work. A rogue bottle of Dr Pepper rolling sideways during a shootout with police. Salad bags popping with force. All the tills in American food shops are bleeping at once now, you can hear them here, you know what it is. It’s happening right now. DVDs of all unwatched food programmes in anti-cancer charity shops are stacked vertically in their cases and cracking under the weight. Vitamin pills and protein supplements are rattling in small plastic tubs in a trade box in the back of an estate car. The pouring of sweeteners and protein powders like a waterfall over a pyramid of neatly stacked quinoa packets. Sewage can be heard running from a pipe, but at some distance across a field. The thump of an unripe Somali mango along an uneven wooden floor knocks a black poison box by the back door. The slow slip of oil down the back of a shelf. The airy wind of custard powder, mustard powder tipping graciously off shelves joins the dusty cascade. All the rolls of foil unravelling, unravelling across miles and miles out of the doors of all the shops. On the back of a moped, pieces rattling inside packets inside wrapped presents for the child of a waiter at a hotel where you will visit. A venomous spider in a crate of bananas travelling at high speed out of sight in the dark. The hungry peeling-back of mouldy sandwiches in one violent gesture. A volcano of broken biscuits that failed the quality testing at the factories. The snap of a trap on a rat as it goes for bait on the floor of a kitchen you ate in. The rattle of single-use cutlery by teenagers on a date. Someone pouring milk powder on a fire to make a fireball; a puncture in the bottom of a can of Stella causing a tiny but fierce fountain over the shoes of a commuter. Sparkling flavoured water all over the floor, fizzing desperately. Frozen peas in their billions melting slowly in the packets, recorded from the inside. Plastic, plastic, plastic, plastic, plastic, plastic, plastic. Every cheap kettle boiling at once next to cups ready with teabags. A coffee bean explodes politely on a small pan by a tent. A showering-down of broken glass from corporate headquarters. The firm peeling-back of skin from a rabbit caught in a homemade trap next to an open fire in woodland. Toilet rolls going up quickly with a woomph; the sprinklers are supposed to be on but we can only hear one working. The heat is making the jars of pickle and sauces explode with a muted crack. An anorexic dancer on the set for an ad about exercise breaks her leg with a bitter, heavy snap. A sister shakes a box of grape nuts. A fly keeps landing on the same bit of abandoned meat at the counter. The crumbling of Rennies, Gaviscon. All the bottled waters thrown off shops’ shelves at once. San Pellegrino. Vittel. Highland Spring. Evian. Volvic. GLACÉAU Smartwater. Aqua Pura. Nestlé Pure Life. Badoit. Brecon Carreg. Dasani. Mount Franklin. Morning Fresh. Oro. Buxton. Poland Spring. Perrier. Radenska. Spa. Souroti. Trump Ice. Aqua Safe. Some bottles smash, some bobble awkwardly, some do nothing. There’s something in this shop that gives you cancer and it makes a noise here. Everything in the freezer sounds like it is coming alive. In fact, it is recordings of the life cycle of every animal or bit of an animal now frozen inside the freezer condensed into a one-minute chunk and played out of speakers hidden at the botto
m.

  A basket held by a young boy bangs the corner of an aisle. We hear the sound of the popcorn again. A maize-farm worker in Kenya is being sprayed with pesticide by a tractor as it passes between the trees. An airline meal is plonked down in front of you. A young person is retching quietly, hunched over a school toilet. Bleep: your bananas through the scanner. Someone nervously fiddling with coins in a queue, trying to work out if they have enough money to buy the thing they need to eat. A dog with a bone, a cat with a bird in its mouth. A thin child chewing on dried pasta. Someone about your age, similar height, not far from where you grew up, walks into a restaurant. A crashing of overstuffed waste bins. Just as her colleagues break out in laughter at her story, the doctor raises her fork and opens her mouth.