2-Day

I made an album. It’s titled 2-Day, and records the realtime sound of a box being shipped between Seattle and Chicago. There are two tracks: FedEx: 98052 to 60091 and USPS: 60091 to 98052. They are 51 and 64 hours long respectively. The entire album is available on Youtube, split into around 11 hours segments due to upload length limitations (naturally one of the uploads also got flagged for copyright infringement against Neil Young).

I created this album because I was very curious about all the boxes that kept showing up at my house. How did they get here? What happened to them along the way? It seemed like magic. So I thought I’d try sending an audio recorder through the mail to investigate.

And although these boxes generally appeared quite dull when I came across them at my doorstep, judging by the audio at least, they really go on quite the adventure getting there. There’s rumbling, there’s chatting, there’s humming, there’s clattering, there’s silence, and there’s even music. All rather ASMR too. Certainly much more interesting than whatever is being delivered, unless that thing is a box containing the sound of its own shipping of course.

I recommend loading up a track and jumping about to get a sense of its flavor. Or skip to a random point, close your eyes, and just listen. Sure there are ten hour stretches of what may at first sound like silence, but then perhaps Wang Chung comes fading in out of nowhere. Little boxes hurtling through the unknown, capturing a small slice of existence on their way. And it was good.

A few excerpts to get started:

FedEx: 98052 to 60091

USPS: 60091 to 98052