If you’ve ever managed to find just the right soundtrack to your everyday life then you know the kind of cinematic makeover your environment receives. When you find that right sound, any mundane landscape can be instantly dramatized.
“You Are Listening To” is a website where real life and music are blended in a very fascinating and captivating way. Lulling sounds of ambient music are pared with live streams of police radio from the hectic inner city life of New York, Los Angeles and other North American cities.
The project is the result of techie Eric Eberhardt, who fortunately saw the brilliance in this mash-up when he was listening in to a San Francisco police scanner station on soma.fm while music was playing in the background.
As tranquilizing ambient music is mixed with the urgency of a harsh reality, in which someone’s just been shot at a street corner or someone’s threatening to jump off a building, you’re simultaneously hyperaware and detached. Like you’re hovering above the streets seeing everything from a bird’s-eye view, luckily at a safe distance.
In Between Songs 