Stream 72 Hours of Ambient Sounds from Blade Runner: Relax, Go to Sleep in a Dystopian Future

As reflex­ive­ly as we may now describe the 2019 Los Ange­les of Blade Run­ner as “dystopi­an” — and indeed, as vivid a mod­ern dystopia as cin­e­ma has yet pro­duced — who among us would­n’t want to spend at least a few hours there? Much of the sur­face appeal is, of course, visu­al: the rainy neon-lined streets, the indus­tri­al fear­some­ness, those tow­er-side video geisha. But no film tru­ly suc­ceeds, at cre­at­ing a world or any­thing else, with­out the right sound. We may not con­scious­ly real­ize it when we watch the movie, no mat­ter how many times we’ve seen it before, but the son­ic ele­ments, all care­ful­ly craft­ed, do more than their fair share to make Blade Run­ner feel like Blade Run­ner.

And so the best way to put your­self into Blade Run­ner’s world may be to sur­round your­self with its sounds, a task made much eas­i­er by “ambi­ent geek” Crysknife007, whose Youtube chan­nel offers a playlist of ambi­ent noise from Blade Run­ner places. These include Deckard’s apart­ment, the Tyrell Build­ing, the Brad­bury Hotel, and oth­ers, each of which loops for a con­tin­u­ous twelve hours. (The com­plete playlist above runs for 72 hours.) Some of the loca­tions even die-hard fans of the movie might not rec­og­nize, because they come from anoth­er exten­sion of Blade Run­ner’s real­i­ty: the 1997 PC adven­ture game that has a new cast of char­ac­ters play out a dif­fer­ent sto­ry in the pro­to-cyber­punk urban set­ting with the same neces­si­ty for just the right sound to cre­ate just the right atmos­phere

Crysknife007, who as an ambi­ent musi­cian goes under the name “Cheesy Ner­vosa,” seems to have a side line in this sort of thing: last month we fea­tured oth­er sci-fi-inspired selec­tions from the same Youtube chan­nel like the sounds of the ship’s engine from Star Trek: the Next Gen­er­a­tion and the TARDIS from Doc­tor Who. But it’s Blade Run­ner, as Thom Ander­sen says in his doc­u­men­tary Los Ange­les Plays Itself, that “con­tin­ues to fas­ci­nate. Per­haps it express­es a nos­tal­gia for a dystopi­an vision of the future that has become out­dat­ed. This vision offered some con­so­la­tion because it was at least sub­lime. Now the future looks brighter, hot­ter, and bland­er.” But even as the real 2019 draws near, what­ev­er the future actu­al­ly ends up look­ing like, we at least know we can keep it sound­ing inter­est­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Mak­ing Blade Run­ner: See the Orig­i­nal Sketch­book, Sto­ry­boards, On-Set Polaroids & More

10 Hours of Ambi­ent Arc­tic Sounds Will Help You Relax, Med­i­tate, Study & Sleep

Moby Lets You Down­load 4 Hours of Ambi­ent Music to Help You Sleep, Med­i­tate, Do Yoga & Not Pan­ic

Music That Helps You Sleep: Min­i­mal­ist Com­pos­er Max Richter, Pop Phe­nom Ed Sheer­an & Your Favorites

42 Hours of Ambi­ent Sounds from Blade Run­ner, Alien, Star Trek and Doc­tor Who Will Help You Relax & Sleep

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.