Numbers Stations

[Drygioni]

Numbers stations (or number stations) are shortwave radio stations of uncertain origin. They generally broadcast artificially generated voices reading streams of numbers, words, letters (sometimes using a spelling alphabet), tunes or Morse code. They are in a wide variety of languages and the voices are usually female, though sometimes male or children's voices are used.

Fascinating stuff. The Wikipedia article is a good read.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdnoAJ7KoFE to hear one. Actual broadcast starts 1.00 in.

You will shit yourself at 1.17.

[littlefallsmets]

Oh, I love the shit outta those.

Used to listen for them on my dad's shortwave as a kid.

[pmcd9]

I heard about these a few years ago.  It's so cool and eerie.  Very cold war.

[Carlos del Vaca]

Yankee.  Hotel. Foxtrot.

[CortJstr]

Yankee.  Hotel. Foxtrot.

Is that where they got that album name from, one of these stations?

[littlefallsmets]

Indeed.

"Poor Places" is built around shortwave static and the outro involves one of the female English-language counters calling out that YHF combo over and over again.

Invoking paranoia and distance and isolation, you know, a situation where a spy code you could never make sense of on the ham radio is the closest thing you have left to a human connection. Is rad.

It's actually what introduced me to Wilco, "a band sampled a numbers station in a song? I'll have to buy that record".

[Carlos del Vaca]

There's a Stereolab song that samples one of these stations as well.

[linnea]

The dudes from Wilco took that sample, unfortunately, from another dude's number stations recordings called the Conet Project. They didn't just make their own (I am pretty sure that YHF numbers station is still in operation, but I dunno). Like some dude who releases recordings of whales or birdsongs, the Conet dude owned copyright to his recording of a pirate radio station. I guess there was some big lawsuit over paying the Conet dude royalties from "Poor Places".

[KeithHernandez]

Wait, so this other dude made an exact copy of something and somehow got copyrights and Wilco came along and used it artistically and they had to pay him? cause that is about the most fucked up thing ever.  If he made copies (like, you know, stole the idea and sound) of the stations I can understand that, but if it was just a recording then fuck him.

Also, it is not unfortunate.  I would hope they would use a real one.

[littlefallsmets]

The question DOES lend itself, y'know.

How is any sort of copyright enforceable on a recording of a broadcast that is either illegal or part of an officially disavowed spy mission?

There seems to be some level of fallacy involved here.

[pmcd9]

Yeah Poor places rocks ass.

I think I am remembering now that I came to learn about numbers stations when NPR did a story about them, maybe it was This American Life, which became a topic of interest in the wake of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

[miles]

I found this: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1074687

Could that be it? Haven't listened to it yet but looks interesting.

I couldn't find anything in the archives of This American Life, but if anyone else turns it up, I'd love to hear it. Unrelated, well, maybe related only because it's about radio, is this program on TAL.

[AugustWest]

I once bought a package of blank CD-R's.  Next thing I know I got a letter from John Cage's lawyers saying I'd violated his copyright on 4'33".

[JorgeFabregas]

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2004/06/63952

[KeithHernandez]

I once bought a package of blank CD-R's.  Next thing I know I got a letter from John Cage's lawyers saying I'd violated his copyright on 4'33".

In July 2002, composer Mike Batt was accused of copyright infringement by the estate of John Cage after crediting his track "A Minute's Silence" as being written by "Batt/Cage". Batt initially vowed to fight the suit, even going so far as to claim that his piece is "a much better silent piece. I have been able to say in one minute what Cage could only say in four minutes and thirty-three seconds." Batt told The Independent that "My silence is original silence, not a quotation from his silence." Batt eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed six figure sum in September 2002.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%2733%22#References_by_other_artists