The unchallenged existence of Numbers Stations is a symptom of the somnambulistic state that the worlds educated populations live in. Anything can be done to this population, and no one will notice or react in any way.
—Akin Fernandez
Sometime in 2002, I stumbled into Aquarius Records trolling for some new sounds, when I was immediately drawn to the image on the cover of something called The Conet Project. I didn’t even skim the review before clicking the first sample. I waited for the first track to load with no expectations.
Distant, warbled voices drowned by seven brief tones…interrupted by Swedish Rhapsody being played on an over-amped musicbox…repeat.. repeat…repeat…numbers read by what sounds like a young girl…the musicbox again…repeat…repeat…the girl, more numbers…
By the the time the shortwave distortion took over 2:45 minutes into the track, my attention had shifted toward a singular point of focus and remained there until all the tracks had played out. It’s difficult to describe it any other way. I tried to reassemble what i’d just heard.
Each recording was a like vignette, replete with it’s own signature nuance and voice, but there was something else going on here. Something more than Toshiya Tsunoda meets Kraftwerk. Something utterly captivating and altogether different.
Digging a little deeper I began to understand just what set it apart.
Expand Post (tome, media:8+)*
*includes full download (133.9MB, mp3.zip + 76pg.pdf)
I finally got ahold of The Conet Project a couple of years back, after it had gone in and out of print for several years. It’s pure, unintentional experimental music. Mesmerizing.
Oh my…!
I haven’t heard these things since I was a very young boy. I used to creep under my covers as a child at night when i was supposed to be a sleep and flip through the dial trying to catch these things. They were always hidden in the white static between the foreign stations.
I never knew what they were for but they fascinated me immensely. I found them eerie, haunting but compelling at the same time. They always made me feel I was listening to hidden ghosts and that I had found something i shouldn’t have. And hearing them again all these years later I get the exact same feelings and the exact same chills down my spine. But I’m still drawn to them. The experience reminds me of Richard Dreyfus in CEOTTK; being compelled but not knowing why….