In 1985, Dave Scott began a project called Twenty Streets at Midnight. The objective was to travel throughout the United States to record the ambient sounds of streets. It was quickly discovered that streets all have their own unique aural qualities, depending on many factors such as the type of pavement, the weather, and the types of traffic moving along the streets. Listening to these recordings, you can hear each location at a particular moment in time. You can pick out the different types of vehicles, even the different types of tires they wore, by the sounds of their passing. Weather also plays an important role in determining the ambient sound of each street. Some were dry and some were wet. You can hear people and other natural sounds. All of these sounds combine to form a type of aural portrait. 

The process for making these recordings never varied. A stereo cassette recorder was placed close to the curb of each street at the hour of 12:00 midnight (local times) and allowed to record uninterrupted. The recordings were not tampered with or altered in any way. The original recordings have been digitized and saved as MP3 files which are the files presented on Congruent Acoustics's release #CA04, remastered in February, 2010.
