Phil Kline had an idea. He had a collection of noises, samples from various places and keyboard washes, and he wondered what he could do with them. In a moment of genius it struck him - stick them together, make a lot of tapes of the sounds, and call all his mates together to bring their boomboxes and play them all at once, while walking around lower New York.
Well you would, wouldn't you.
And the amazing thing is, it works - the sounds created by all of these boomboxes, all slightly out of sync with each other but near enough that one merely forms an echo of another, and exceptional and moving. I had the pleasure of walking with Phil and Co this year (2001 - he does the boombox walk every year before Christmas, and it is getting larger each time), and the interaction between the boomboxes, the people, and New York needs to be seen to be believed.
You know those cool soundscape things guys like David Sylvian, Robert Fripp and Talk Talk do? This is kind of like those, and you want to hear it.
And if you find your self in New York in mid December, you know what to do.