Adrian Rew: Slot Machine Music

Capturing the engineered soundscapes of Midwestern American casinos

I remember being terrified when I first set foot into a Japanese pachinko hall, one of those popular gambling spots where the constant whirring and clanging of machines creates a cacophonic wall of sound.

When the experimental composer Adrian Rew first visited the Horseshoe casino in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, a monstrous gambling establishment of 100,000 square feet with over 1,600 slot machines, the world of sound he encountered there filled him with a strange sense of comfort.

“Previous to this first visit, I never anticipated that my friends and family would become concerned about my habit, or the increasing frequency with which I now drive out to the casinos of Chicago's suburbs”, he’d eventually write in a 2014 essay for The Wire.

“Hit by a cornucopia of slot machine tones, triggering aleatorically and coalescing into shimmering masses, I was struck by the need to return and record the sounds that so entranced me”, Rew writes in the liner notes to the 2026 re-release Slot Machine Music, Vol 1 & 2: Field Recordings From Middle American Casinos. “It wouldn’t prove to be easy – casino security is intense – and due to the clandestine nature of the operation, my recording techniques were by no means sophisticated.”

Armed with an Olympus LS-11 field recorder, Rew made a bunch of such recordings at casinos throughout the Midwest between mid-2013 and early 2014, and then released the results in two CD-r volumes on his own Ergot imprint. Volume 1 was pressed on vinyl by Hanson Records, the label run by noise musician Aaron Dilloway. Rew knew him from studying at Oberlin College in Ohio.

The connection to Hanson and Dilloway may have helped in bringing this non-music to a potentially interested audience of noiseniks. Both volumes were now reissued, this time on one cassette, by London label Death Is Not The End, who have created a catalogue of outstanding, unusual releases in the last decade, from 1960s Persian piano recordings to 1990s London pirate radio adverts.

Listening to Slot Machine Music, I come to think that the random jumble of machine tones and conversations could almost pass as ambient music. In fact, Rew wrote in his The Wire essay that it reminded him of his “favourite ambient records: Laraaji’s Day Of Radiance; Iasos’s Inter-Dimensional Music; James Ferraro circa 2008–2009.”

Using these recordings as background ambience while focusing on work, I’d soon notice getting near that trance-like state that professional gamblers, addicts and academic researchers describe as the “zone”. In an actual casino, that effect is enhanced by the interaction with the one-armed bandits. “When sitting there in cyborg union with the machine one really does create a rhythmic system of feedback in relation to the game”, Adrian Rew explained in a 2015 interview.

“Since some of the arpeggiated tones have a very specific cadence, it is incredibly tempting to sustain the sound by hitting the gambling button right as the musical phrase ends, thereby perpetuating the lull of the machine song. It is this mutually flowing process of betting and listening/watching that makes it so difficult to leave a machine once you are seated.”

Assembling his recordings, Rew learned a lot about how soundscapes can be used as part of social engineering. For example, game designers were once tuning all machines to C major, “in order to optimize harmonic cohesion.” While they’ve since introduced more aural diversity, “C still dominates the game floor.” The mere fact that professionals spend a great deal of time perfecting every single machine sound speaks volumes about the profitability of these ventures.

Casino owners invest a lot of time, money and effort to create the “zone” for gamblers. Rew describes it as “a kind of inner experience during which the rhythmic flow of human-machine collusion borders on mysticism. Time is abolished in the act of contemporary video gambling – simulated slot reels roll, virtual poker decks deal, and all worldly concerns are lost – leaving only the aura of total zone immersion in its wake.”

The “zone” is, of course, designed to be highly addictive, and therefore profitable. “Sometimes characterized as the crack cocaine of gambling, the intensity of the machine zone is a symptom of casino ergonomics”, Rew writes, “emotionally manipulative fragrance-saturation, mesmerizing lights, subtly controlling walkways and, as captured here, meticulously engineered sonic environments all play a role in evoking the timeless void of the zone.”

The composer decided to leave his field recordings untreated. His own presence is noticeable only because he wanders through the premises, occasionally talks to casino staff and plays at some of the slot machines. At one point he even leaves the establishment – the chirping of the crickets gets louder, the echo of the machines almost quiets down, and then a freight train passes by. We have successfully freed ourselves from the stranglehold of the machines.

However, as long as we are still inside the casino, the recordings document a sound environment that is consciously created to influence behavior. The “zone” feels comforting to many, not just Rew, who calls it a “metaphysical suspension”.

“The experience of sitting entranced at a machine can be almost womb-like,” Rew writes. “Since gambling and slot machine addiction is very real, I’ve found that the sounds can trigger reminiscent feelings in people who have spent extended periods of times around slot machines, whether gambling or not. (…) Still, even for those who have never stepped foot into a casino, the soothing sounds remain effective in playback, only without money to be lost.”