I have a brand new addiction, and that addiction is cowbell ‘The Conet Project‘. At the most base ‘The Conet Project’ is four CDs of shortwave radio transmissions collected from numbers stations worldwide and released in 1997 on Irdial-Discs. I came to be aware of it after recently completing ‘Learning How To Die‘ by Greg Kot, the biography of Wilco. Lead singer Jeff Tweedy had carried these CDs around in his car for years and actually went so far as to use a sample on the song ‘Poor Places’, and named his album ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot‘ after a track on the first disc.
A bit more in-depth, for those unfamiliar with numbers stations and shortwave radio, these are one-way communications almost exclusively used by spies and spy organizations to communicate, and have been in use for over 30 years. A “one time pad” allows the message – typically made up of noises, songs, and people (usually female) repeating letters, numbers, or words – to be deciphered, and the pad is then destroyed. It is not believed that a shortwave communication has yet been cracked. Most messages repeat on the hour every hour for at least a day, and typically last 10 to 50 minutes in length. Strangely enough this is still in practice today, regardless of the more modern technologies around us.
The CDs are definitely odd to put in at first, perhaps quite boring to some. But understanding that inside these few minutes of sounds lie messages that were likely used to cause harm to people and/or places makes it a rather interesting listening experience. Right from the top the first track – ‘The Swedish Rhapsody’ – breaks from blips of sound to the music of what seems like some kind of toy, then turns to a female child speaking.
I’m not sure Kip remembers but I do recall he and I listening to shortwave broadcasts quite a bit as children on an old radio I kept in my room. I’ve probably still got the radio around here somewhere, I’ll just have to dig it up. If anyone is interested in checking ‘The Conet Project’ out just let me know, I’ll hook you up.
Cheers!
More Reading:
Irdial: The Conet Project
NPR: Lost and Found Sound
Haunted Ink: The Conet Project Review
Pitchforkmedia: The Conet Project Review
Aquarius Records: The Conet Project Review
Numbers Stations
SpyNumbers.com