The Conet Project

For fans of--Boards of Canada, William Basinski, field recording, etcetcetc



From http://www.irdial.com -

For more than 30 years the Shortwave radio spectrum has been used by the worlds intelligence agencies to transmit secret messages. These messages are transmitted by hundreds of “Numbers Stations”.

Shortwave Numbers Stations are a perfect method of anonymous, one way communication. Spies located anywhere in the world can be communicated to by their masters via small, locally available, and unmodified Shortwave receivers. The encryption system used by Numbers Stations, known as a “one time pad” is unbreakable. Combine this with the fact that it is almost impossible to track down the message recipients once they are inserted into the enemy country, it becomes clear just how powerful the Numbers Station system is.

These stations use very rigid schedules, and transmit in many different languages, employing male and female voices repeating strings of numbers or phonetic letters day and night, all year round.
The voices are of varying pitches and intonation; there is even a German station (The Swedish Rhapsody) that transmits a female child's voice!

One might think that these espionage activities should have wound down considerably since the official “end of the cold war”, but nothing could be further from the truth. Numbers Stations (and by inference, spies) are as busy as ever, with many new and bizarre stations appearing since the fall of the Berlin wall.

Why is it that in over 30 years, the phenomenon of Numbers Stations has gone almost totally unreported? What are the agencies behind the Numbers Stations, and why are the eastern European stations still on the air? Why does the Czech republic operate a Numbers Station 24 hours a day? How is it that Numbers Stations are allowed to interfere with essential radio services like air traffic control and shipping without having to answer to anybody? Why does the “Swedish Rhapsody” Numbers Station use a small girls voice?
These are just some of the questions that remain unanswered.

Now you will be able to hear this unique and extraordinary phenomenon for yourself, as Irdial-Discs releases THE CONET PROJECT: the first comprehensive collection of Numbers Stations recordings released to the public.

And Wiki -
Recordings of numbers stations sometimes find their way onto records by other musicians via sampling, such as Stereolab's song "Pause", Porcupine Tree's "Even Less", Chroma Key's "Even the Waves", or various songs by Wilco, whose album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is named after a message sampled on it. Pere Ubu's drummer Scott Krauss is an avid fan of numbers stations, and has featured recordings in several of the group's songs. The track "On the Lamb" by 310, from the album Aug 56 lasts almost half an hour, and features samples from a numbers station throughout.

The Kraftwerk song "Numbers" is influenced by number station transmissions.

The reclusive Scottish duo Boards of Canada were influenced by numbers stations at an early age. The track "Gyroscope" on the Geogaddi album is thought to contain a sample of a child counting provided by the Conet Project.

The UK based group 65daysofstatic sample "The Lincolnshire Poacher" along with several other stations on the song "No Station."

The UK group Cinerama released a cover of The Smiths song "London" as a b-side to their single "Manhattan", in 2000. The track contains a couple of numbers station samples.