Excellent new posts over at Woebotnik.
At the risk of boring the hell out of everyone, it MUST be noted that Richard H. Kirk has been monitoring the shortwave 'numbers' for many years now. As he said in the Wire back in March 2000:
"I started listening to shortwave radio because I use it a lot for sound sources and I kept picking up snippits of conversations relating to the war (Kosovo). There are also these weird frequencies just transmitting numbers that have been going on since the Cold War. These are stations that you can tune into and all they do is recite strings of numbers in robotic voices. Well, if the Cold War's supposed to be over, why are the voices still there?"
These 'clandestine transmissions' are like a red flag to a bull in the ultra-paranoid worldview of Mr. Kirk. Samples of 'numbers voices' have appeared in his work, particularly on "Darkness At Noon" and "T.W.A.T. -The War Against Terror".
There's also a Boards Of Canada track called "Gyroscope" from the "Geogaddi" album that features a string of numbers recited in a freaky childlike voice which I presume was sampled from a shortwave station.
Also loved Matt's piece on the bleep 'n' bass/ Belgium 'ardkore era, which is never out of fashion at Gutterbreakz HQ. Respec'
