Our LP 'Words Of Love Broadcast In Code is out in the US on the 13th, can be ordered now from www.mindexpansion.com and whose seventh track is the subject of this entry...

'Number Stations' broadcast coded messages to secret agents. They are very, very creepy, as the example above (which will be familiar to Stereolab fans) 'The Swedish Rhapsody' shows. The Cubans, Americans, Russians, Polish, Hungarians, English, Germans. We are all at it, sending creepy coded messages around the world. And there is absolutely no way that you can decode a message unless you are the recipient who holds the 'one time pad' key, a translation of the numbers which is valid only for specific broadcasts on specific days, probably hidden in a spy watch or a hollowed out spy book.

I read up on them and listened to any recordings that I could find. They fascinated me. They started to trouble me a bit. They're pretty troublesome - creepy disembodied voices, sometimes gongs or chimes that sound as though they are played from tape loops that have stretched over time, we don't know exactly where they come from and we don't know exactly where they are going to. I found them troublesome until I discovered, in an interview with an ex KGB officer, that the vast majority of the messages are, in fact, personal messages from family and loved ones to the spy in hiding. This new bit of knowledge made a whole lot of difference, the broadcasts lost some of their creepiness, and I wrote a song about them to celebrate.

This is one of the three songs which Dino contributed to. He came on board very late in the project but he'll feature more on the next record for sure. On this song he is playing a guitar that sounds a little bit like a bass but it reminds me that I forgot to mention that on the second song 'Don't Eat Meat' I should have written that he played a guitar melody in the chorus which became the vocal melody. I used to play with him in 'Miss Mend, the band that became 'The Projects'.

I made the song on the computer from scratch (adding the live drums, bass and guitar later to replace ugly sounding virtual instruments), it was the first song written or recorded for the LP and I used it to teach myself how Cubase worked, never having done this sort of thing before. I found the half dozen number stations broadcasts on the internet (unfortunately my shortwave radio can't pick any up here in Central London, actually I can barely pick up Resonance FM, the best radio station, perhaps I need a new radio. Or I could just listen to it on the internet)

It's the 7th song off our new LP 'Words Of Love Broadcast In Code' and I've uploaded it to the myspace music player until tomorrow when it is the awe inspiring and all powerful 'Impulses and Motivations'

Graeme