Fred Armisen makes some noise on ambient LP

Comic's '100 Sound Effects' is a throwback to the haunted house albums of days past.

- BY RACHEL BRODSKY

FRED ARMISEN in his Netflix special "Standup for Drummers," which later won a Grammy as an album.

(DAVID MOIR)

Fred Armisen loves doing interviews. It's a rare trait for someone of Armisen's stature in Hollywood: an A-list comedy giant who spent more than a decade on “Saturday Night Live,” skewered hipster culture for eight seasons on IFC’s sketch staple “Portlandia” and who currently stars as the lovably deranged Uncle Fester on Netflix’s “Wednesday.”

And yet Armisen is completely sincere when he insists he's delighted to be in press mode for his new album, “100 Sound Effects.” “I love it,” Armisen promises as our Zoom conversation goes over the hour mark and I apologize for keeping him.

“When I was growing up [and] I think about this all the time if a David Byrne interview or a Mark Mothersbaugh interview came on the radio or whatever, I really consumed every word of it,” Armisen says. “It was as important as whatever they were promoting. I already had the album, but I wanted to hear what went into this record.”

Armisen is equally forthcoming about the creation of “100 Sound Effects,” a literal catalog of highly specific noises that could occur across a variety of settings, such as music venues and stores (“Music Venue Employee Kicking Everyone Out While Throwing Away Bottles”), airplanes (“Overhead Compartment Closing”) and haunted houses (“Haunted House Demonic Voices”), the last of which was top of mind as he conceptualized the project.