“Those fridges are probably the fourth best musical group to come out of Sheffield”: Supermarket goes viral for the chilled ambient drones of its freezer section

The city of Sheffield has a rich musical history, having given the world the likes of The Human League, Cabaret Voltaire and Arctic Monkeys, but the latest musical sensation to come out of Britain's Steel City is an ambient drone phenomenon that listeners are describing as "angelic", "heavenly" and "fucking beautiful".

These particular ambient sounds haven't been carefully composed in Ableton Live by a chin-stroking Eno wanna-be, though – they've originated from a far less likely source: the freezer section in Sheffield's Ecclesall Road Co-Op supermarket.

Let's rewind for a moment. Our story begins in the Sheffield subreddit, where a perceptive Redditor shared a post praising the blissful sound of the freezers in their local Co-Op. "Anyone noticed how nice the freezers sound in the eccy road co-op?", the post reads.

"It's like all the fans have been carefully tuned to the calmest droning chord ever, it's like being in an electrical gong bath. I thought it might have been a freak event when I first heard it but it's been that way for a couple of months. If anyone has some decent field recording equipment I'd really recommend capturing it."

Weeks later, an enterprising Redditor made the journey to Eccy Road to record the freezers in question, sharing a short video that gathered dozens of comments, before being reposted on Twitter/X and promptly going viral.

It's not hard to hear why – there's an undeniably arresting quality to the drone, a strangely symphonic ambience that could have been lifted straight out of a Stars Of The Lid track, recalling some of Brian Eno's more brooding and atmospheric soundscapes. We can detect an audible whiff of William Basinski's found sound tape experiments, too, but it's more The Refrigeration Loops than The Disintegration Loops.

Commenters were quick to unpick the harmonic content of the freezer's chilled-out tones, and debate arose over whether it was closer to a C# or an A#m7 chord, before somebody that evidently has a lot of time on their hands produced a comprehensive spectral analysis.

"The dominant note you hear is the C# and that is the lowest frequency with the octave very prominent (140Hz approx - C# is actually 138.5Hz), but there is a very strong E# (177Hz) a major third up from the low C# which does not occur there in the standard harmonic pattern, neither is its occurrence an octave above that," the comment reads.

"The 5th (G#) occurs where expected (416Hz) but the 7th is much closer to a major 7th (B#, 527Hz) which is odd (it should be the flattened 7th around 493Hz) and the upper octave above that. There is a faint A# too, above the 5th (459Hz, A# is actually 466Hz), again not where it occurs in the harmonic spectrum."

Glad we got that sorted, then. The response to the Ecclesall Road freezer hum was so enthusiastic that one commenter requested a 10-hour extended cut for use as a sleep aid. Their prayers were answered, and there's now a "cleaned, looped and treated" version of the recording up on YouTube, "for deep focus, sleep or quiet contemplation". (Knock yourselves out.)

To top it all off, multiple users on the Sheffield subreddit have confirmed that a recording of the freezers was genuinely featured yesterday on Greg James' BBC Radio 1 Breakfast show, a broadcast that regularly attracts more than 4m listeners.