SHEFFIELD, England – Local music fan Dale Morton was physically removed by venue staff from last night’s show after repeatedly screaming requests at ambient musician Lena Huber to play recordings of birds in their natural habitat, annoyed sources report.
“This wouldn’t have been a big deal if shows were still cool,” said a clearly still intoxicated Morton. “Ambient shows used to mean something. They weren’t all polished and pretentious like they are now. They were, like, raw and pretentious. And you could sit in calm contemplation however the fuck you wanted without all these other sound-bathers acting like fucking cops.”
Despite being upset by the disruption, self-described “sonic sculptor” Huber seemed to agree that the incident spoke to issues in the scene today.
“This happens all the time at shows nowadays,” said Huber as she attached a contact microphone to her washing machine. “But it’s because people like that guy are just jumping on the bandwagon and only want to hear the hits. I put my set lists together for the real fans who want to hear deep cuts, like a solitary piano note with lots of reverb, a melancholy voicemail from my mother, and extremely quiet rustling. For guys like him, it’s always just ‘play the bird sounds already’ so they can go get drunk and speak above a whisper again.”
Yesenia Villegas, a conservationist and spokesperson for the Wildlife Trusts, expressed a unique perspective on the lack of bird calls.
“Global warming and human activity have greatly affected the lives of birds and the public needs to pay attention to our winged brothers and sisters,” said Villegas. “Ambient musicians used to be our most reliable source for public relations, but ever since that bastard Basinski played those stupid broken tapes we’ve seen a dramatic decrease in unfiltered bird recordings. People like Dale are doing such important work bringing up this issue and we need to celebrate that, not penalize it.”
At press time, Dale was seen screaming at a real bird outside his window to “shut the fuck up, I have a fucking headache.”