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*Krzzzshhhzht!* The television crackles and flickers into life. "This Christmas, small quantities of this (gesturing at a bottle of squash) are ending up... In these! (holding up a glass of water). It’s called 'squash' or, if you’re feeling fancier, 'cordial', and it’s taking the domestic drinks market by storm". With a resigned sigh, you switch off the television (TV). How many times have you seen that same advert this week? You open advert-view-counts-2022.xlsx and dutifully update the figure—watched through the bulbous lens of a tear, the 17 in cell G98 dies and an inevitable 18 is born from its ashes. "Want to save your changes?".

Let's take a step back for a second. evocative-booth.gov is the UK's number one government-backed recording studio and dining table. The German language has a word, traumgesmorgen (not to be confused with its better-known cousin morgentraum), which translates roughly to "a dream of the morning"—an abstract morning with its ideally crystalline dewdrops and Kellogg's. Stride into the sparse street, humid air thick with the yawning halitosis of emptied black bins, their lids left agape, gormless.

Our three step approach

1. Where necessary, we begin by re-exporting all audio files in 32-bit floating point WAV format. This provides greater flexibility when working with DSP effects, and of course the rendering process gives us plenty of time to set the table.
2. With the table all set, we can afford to relax a little, and so we do just that and we hum a soothing melody to ourselves. Doesn't need to be a real song! Oh no, so much the better if we can improvise an original number in these moments: ideally something in a minor key, but with an upward inflection to it—something that says, "yeah, these might be uncertain times—OK, I know that, we all know that—but you know what? Let's not abandon all hope just yet". But sir, how fast should I hum up it? Up it? Yes, certainly. Oh I don't know, how about a little tempo I like to call... 80 BPM! At that very point, who should walk in but Glen Hoddle! Not the former England footballer Glen Hoddle, obviously—a completely unrelated man with the same name. He grunts a vague greeting. You finish humming the rest of the bar, then reciprocate: "hey". "I'd never move away from this town, you know", Glen offers, apropos of nothing whatsoever. You shrug, and resume your humming. Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmmmmmmmmmmmm!
3. Flick the TV back on. That advert's finally finished, and the program that you were seemingly so engrossed in is back in full swing. "I'm not sure *yawning* exactly how long I'm gonna be here tonight", the presenter bellows, both of his forearms lodged in a quite worse-for-wear panel of mid-century drywall. "Aha! Yeah, here's the problem", chirps the tiny co-presenter. "Oh Christ, I thought you'd gone ages ago!"—he spins round, startled, now shoulder-deep in the drywall and becoming frantic.

Bam!

You jolt awake. "What's the matter, sweetie? Not one of those dreams again?", your spouse enquires. "I... Yeah, I dreamt of the morning again—you know, an abstract one", you confirm.

Here at evocative-booth.gov, we—

—"As I stand in the goal, I feel a strange disconnect from the game taking place around me. The shouts of the players and cheers from the crowd fade into a distant hum, like the background noise of a busy city. I fix my eyes on the ball, but my mind is elsewhere."

"What's this?", you enquire, confused. "Did you put the telly on?". "The what?", replies your spouse. "Oh, sorry, the TV", you explain. "Of course not! You must have rolled over onto the remote again. Look, here it is!", she brandishes the TV remote triumphantly. "What is this anyway?", she asks. You press the remote's "MENU" button and the documentary's title appears in blue at the bottom of the screen: "The Other Side of The Net". You keep watching, the goalkeeper's solemn monologue continues: "then I wake up, and I'm here again, in this world where I'm expected to save shots and block goals, to be a hero for a team that doesn't care about me."

Here at evocative-booth.gov, we don't know exactly what's going on:

Husband: [wakes up] Morning, honey!

Wife: [groggy] Morning, love. How did you sleep?

Husband: Same dream again: cereal all over the floor, dust in my eyes—

Wife: —songbirds lined up outside in a queue as far as the eye can see, but you can't see anything because of all the dust and so you go to wipe the dust off of your eyes but it just makes things worse and now your eyes really sting so you go to lay down for a bit but you can't fall asleep 'cos you're already dreaming?

Husband: Yeah... Did you have the same dream too?

			// JavaScript computer code
			const morningDream = true;
			console.log("Enjoy your day at evocative-booth.gov: every day and always!");
			

Wife: No, but you've told me about that same—

The television is turned on accidentally.

Husband: —[angrily] Oh for fuck's sake!

What will our client say about us?

Stare at the TV intently. "If we can just get that piece out, we should be able to fix the wall." The presenter struggles to free himself from the wall, but the more he struggles, the more stuck and the more distressed he becomes. The tiny co-presenter looks on in concern and tries to help, but he is unable to free the presenter from the wall. "We'll have to call for backup", he says, grabbing a walkie-talkie. "This is not good."

A team of construction workers arrive to help free the presenter from the wall. However, as they start to work on the wall, they quickly become stuck as well. "What the hell is going on?" one of the workers cries out, flailing his arms in the drywall. "I don't know, but we're all stuck!" another worker yells, trying to free himself from the wall. The presenter and the tiny co-presenter look on in shock and disbelief as the construction workers struggle to free themselves from the drywall.

"This can't be happening," the presenter says, still stuck in the wall. "We're live on TV!"

A siren sounds, and a fire truck pulls up outside the building. Firefighters rush in and quickly start to work on freeing the construction workers and the presenter from the drywall. After several minutes of intense effort, they are finally able to free everyone and get them out of the wall. "I don't know," the tiny co-presenter says. In response to what? It is not clear.

Just as they're about to leave the room, the firefighters themselves start to struggle and flail their arms. "What the—?", one of them says, before realising that they are getting stuck in the drywall as well. "Oh no, not again!" the presenter yells, watching in horror as the firefighters become trapped in the wall.

One of the firefighters manages to free himself and looks around at the scene. "That's what I call drywall!" he says, shaking his head in disbelief. The presenter and the tiny co-presenter look at each other and nod in agreement. "Yeah, that's definitely what we call drywall", they say, laughing nervously.

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FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

What? Yeah we know.

We do NOT serve food. This one's not an FAQ 'cos no-one ever asks it but we just wanted to make one thing clear!

"Welcome back to Vancesters, with me, Matt Crabb", Crabb cheerfully announces, "and me, 'Main and rice' Steve", his partner adds. "We've got a lovely late 70s Capri here with only three previous owners, but—"

"Will you turn that fucking telly off?!", your spouse bellows from the en suite (referring to the TV).

"on everyone's lips... Steve, where did that nickname come from?", Crabb asks cheekily. 'Main and rice' Steve looks cagey. "I don't want to say", he insists, lips just barely parted.

Yeah, yeah, impressive premise, but what kind of numbers you guys do last quarter? Now this is a really great question. The kind of question that floats through cyberspace like a moth through a Velux™ window and makes you go: "You know what, little question? I'm gonna answer you... With a graph! We were bang out of graph paper though, so I knocked one up on t' computer:

If you could rewind the last five years of your life, what would you do more of? Was this one you, Glen Hoddle (no relation)! No? You cheeky boy!

Your spouse is shouting to you again, the reverberation of their voice against hard ceramic softened slightly by piles and piles of squirted-out toothpaste. "...and stop calling me your fucking spouse", they add, but they can't see what's written down. You cast a coy eye back towards the television, to Crabb's iconic thickset shoulders and greasy black hair. An oily globule drips from the latter and the camera pans down instinctively to see it plop gently onto the lovely hardwood floor of an executive office. In the blurred smear, 'Main and rice' Steve is just barely visible. A jump-cut shows us an unmistakeable hand rummaging through a brown paper takeaway bag.

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"and Scene!", Portland yells. The director's surly paw slaps your back. "So, how is it?", he asks wryly. "Oh, the squash?". "Yeah". "Hmm it's alright, I guess...", you opine—"quite sharp and orangey". "But hey, never mind that. I had the strangest dream—".You're interrupted as Portland answers his mobile phone. "Ah, that's all they have? Nine is probably a bit late, don't you think? Well, if you're sure then—". You turn away in a gesture of respect for the director's privacy (a futile one, as he remains easily in earshot, standing not four feet away). Tasting the squash again, its citric tang tapdancing down your dry tongue, you wonder if this unassuming tincture really is the future...

"Are you the future?", you whisper into the now-empty tumbler.

In demand!

Wife: So... They just left the others stuck in the drywall?

Husband: Yep!

Wife: ...and what happened to them, did they die?

Husband: Yep!

<Wife gasps>

Husband: [laughing heartily] No I'm just kidding, don't worry.

Wife: Wait, so what did happen to them, then? They got rescued too?

Husband: No idea, I switched it off didn't I?

Wife: So then they might've died after all?

Husband: Yeah, could easily have done, *long sigh* could very easily have done.

"—whistle blows, and I snap out of my reverie. The ball is coming towards me, and I instinctively move to block it. But in that moment, I don't feel like a goalkeeper. I feel like a prisoner, trapped between these two posts—"

evocative-booth.gov combines the joie de vivre of recorded sound, with the simple robustness of non-shit wood. After eight hours solid howling your half-rhyming aphorisms into our beat-up SE 4400, you decamp for a well-earned rest, perhaps a Pot Noodle™. But, what's this? Oh no! The searing, meaty broth super-heats its futile plastic vessel and soon thereafter your already-blistered hands... You need to put it down somewhere, and fast, but there's not a surface in sight! How about the—No! Not a chance, look at all the wires! Point made.