Number Radio Stations
Amazing Todd when he was here showed me a link to a website that has the weirdest collection of audioables ever seen on the web. Irdial is apparently a former record label gone bust putting all their content on the web for anyone to enjoy. If you are into noise and other ambient stuff you will loose a couple of days on the site. For example there is a CD with just sonar sounds or space weather. Generally a lot of mostly field recorded soundwaves sometimes put together with music sometimes just standing on their own.
What for me really stood out has not much to do with noise or ambience but with a phenomenon that I have never heard before but when I heard it I actually remembered listening to it in my childhood -> Number Radio Stations.
These are radio stations that consist of nothing more then a person reading seemingly random numbers. I had no clue about the history of them or what their purpose is or where they come from or why they exist. But luckily there is a whole book(let) that comes with the CDs nicely downloadable in PDF format that teaches us about the intrinsic function of number stations - it reads like a fiction novel if you are a geek type of person its pure number pr0n. Matter of fact its the most secure form of passing on encoded information that exists.
What Numbers Stations are.
Numbers Stations are radio broadcasts that appear in the Shortwave bands twenty-four hours a day, on many different frequencies. They are used to transmit short text messages. There are three different types of broadcast; voices reading groups of numbers or phonetic letters, Morse transmissions sending groups of numbers or letters and noise stations, transmitting several different types of noise.
What Numbers Stations are not.
Numbers Stations are not licensed in the conventional sense, and there is no easy to find information on any aspect of Numbers Stations from the government agencies that are concerned with radio use/misuse. They are not weather forecasts, or shipping broadcasts.
If that hooks you, you oughta read the rest of the booklet (pdf).
It has lots of very deep indepth information in it that you didnīt know that you always wanted to know. Especially for people interested in crypto and number crunching.
If you are more into making music or just like to listen to numbers/letters beeing spelled seemingly randomly by nice haunting voices for hours or maybe wanna crack some of the code:
There are 1 2 3 4 CDs in The Conet Project full of number station recording in different languages different presenters. A remix is in order! - *eyes glancing over to certain musicians....*