2014 has been a bumper year for stomping festival tracks but one has stood head and shoulders above the rest and has today been declared the soundtrack to the summer festival season – the constant sound of balloons being filled with nitrous oxide.
“I think that no matter what festival you attended this year the chances are that you heard the sound of noz at least once,” declared Music Mag’s editor in chief David G. Harmon who says that the noise over took other festival sounds like a woman crying, people complaining about the rain and music to be named as the definitive sound of summer due to being heard at least thousands of times at every festival the world over.
“I think it was picked by people because of how wide reaching a sound it is. It’s like a crossover hit because you’re as likely to hear it at the main stage of Glastonbury as you are at the smallest stage of Boomtown. It’s as relevant to everyone as breathing or complaining.”
The sound of laughing gas filling up balloons is now so ubiquitous that some people have even been reporting hearing it after the festival has ended. “I remember coming back from a festival on the train and every whoosh and whirr of the carriage made me glance about expecting to see someone hunched over a balloon with a noz cylinder,” described one man.
“I began to hear the sound everywhere – the sound of water rushing from a tap or the static from my TV. No other track, except maybe something saccharine and pop like S Club 7 or Steps could lodge itself in your brain like that.”
Other users of what The Daily Mail has christened ‘hippy crack’ for its own dark purposes claim that they absolutely love the sound that nitrous makes as it fills a balloon. “It’s such a sweet sound, like a robot sighing loudly after having some kind of robot orgasm, one that presumably involves the rapid secretion of thick black motor oil over the arched back of a fellow robot or especially sexy machine like a printing press or a tank.”
“I look forward to next summer when I can expect to hear it at least once every ten seconds at every festival I attend,” he concluded before putting a balloon to his mouth and breathing through it for a half a minute before appearing to pass out smiling.
