Not long ago, Fred Armisen was reminiscing about the sound-effect LPs he used to stock at the Chicago record store where he worked in the Nineties. These vinyl platters contained all kinds of sounds, ranging from Halloween-themed shrieks and moans intended for use in haunted houses to functional recordings of audiences clapping and laugh tracks. “I just felt like there was an absence in my life of any new records like this,” he says. “Maybe it exists somewhere, but I hadn’t seen any. Then I was like, ‘Why don’t I just make one?’ And then once I made that decision, I tried to commit to it.”

The result is 100 Sound Effects , out Sept. 26 on the indie label Drag City. Armisen spent about a year recreating dozens of highly specific scenarios in recording studios in Los Angeles and Irela

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