While it's hard to speculate about the influence that this reissue willhave on even the smallest of fringe interest groups, without soundinglike a geeky sound-art fetishist or conspiracy nut myself, I will admitat least that after three years delay, The Conet Project repress has me more excited than any record to receive reissue treatment in 2004. This is notto say that I have really enjoyed listening to most of theserecordings, at least not for any extended period, the reason being thatthe four-disc set is absolutely the most intense piece of media I'veencountered since its initial release in 1998. "Numbers stations," forthose who ignored this colossus the first time around, are short-waveradio broadcasts appearing (still) around the clock, transmitting avariety of encoded messages, next to impossible to source, decode, ortrace to a recipient. The messages come via human voices readingnumbers and phonetic letters, series of Morse-coded letters andnumbers, or longer "noise" transmissions, producing different strainsof noise and occasionally snippets of music. This collection (the firstever) is not intense within conventional or, in these days, fashionable"noise" definitions. Rather, the effect must be traced deeper, beyondany surface appeal and into the unrelenting atmosphere these recordingsproduce. Better yet, in a contradictory reading that would support theparanoid "sourceless-ness" that is certainly a theme here, theintensity in the mood of The Conet Project might also be linked to the sounds' unique existence at the surface only,as purely utilitarian noises of unknown, or at least inconceivablecontext. Recently, numbers stations entered the popular mind via asample (from disc 1) that became the haunting invocation"Yankee...Hotel...Foxtrot" in a song from the Wilco album of the samename. The fact that the band selected such a bizarre find for bothprominent placement within one their most powerful songs, and for thetitle of an album epic in its look at emotional isolationism, should beevidence of the captivating power latent in many of these recordings,regardless of their association with the government intelligence groupsand espionage agents that are their most likely sources. While it canbe thrilling to sit and imagine the global impact of one particularseries of stuttered, Slavic letters or static-laden Sousa loop, thesediscs become most effective when the frequencies are allowed to slowlypopulate the airspace, to become, in this archival format, like theghostly remnants of human activity twice removed, a census of blackshadows against the sky's gray analog. The warped, muddied sound of thebroadcasts grants each a discomforting distance, less paranoia-inducingthan simply numbing. To listen is to confront a vast field of inhumanbabble, coated in the noisy resonances of antique equipment,long-distance signaling, and extra-mechanical production. These aremarginally human transmissions, meant to appear timeless, to miss yourears, transmissions largely forgotten, or remembered only in thelog-books of an anonymous conglomerate. This is the true cyber-punksound, "music" which predicts a future of annihilation, replacement,and empty language. It is especially apt that The Conet Projectis being marketed to the experimental electronic crowd, as the moodhere seems a virtual compendium of the accomplishments of labels likeRaster-Noton, 12k, Fällt et al. These labels' pursuit of a reduction ora microscoping of musical forms through delineated digital languageoften threatens the same blank stare that I receive from Conet,intended or not. Here is proof that our music has evolved and left usbehind, in futile struggle to decode it, to connect its makers withourselves, to reach inside it and come up with something other thanevidence of our own growing insignificance. Read More
