(cross-posted from the
other blog)
Reading through my new favorite site,
DamnInteresting.com, I came across some things for which I've been searching a couple of years now: the collected recordings of the
Conet Project, an out-of-print assemblage of
numbers station broadcasts.
Numbers stations are repeated, anonymous, apparently encoded shortwave broadcasts emanating from various points across the world in various languages. The most likely explanation for them is that they carry encoded messages for use in espionage. Given the permanently looped nature of many of the transmissions, it's likely that they've been abandoned and are still running only because they haven't lost power. Prior to today I've only heard a few examples, but thanks to DamnInteresting.com, a link to mp3's of all four discs of the Conet Project was provided at the end of
their article on the subject.
Disc 1Disc 2Disc 3Disc 4So I downloaded all of them and have been listening to them for an hour now. Spooky stuff. It's fun to wonder about their sources, who set them up, what they mean, and who receives them. And, given that I'm the type of person who tends to have sympathy for inanimate objects, I find a certain romance in the idea of a small transmitter, sitting in the middle of nowhere, lost forever, constantly sending out its odd little signal.
Also, as an FYI, Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" was named for one of these numbers stations. Apparently Jeff Tweedy is as big a dork as I am.