Pitchfork has reviewed the Conet Project, a collection of recordings from "numbers stations" - shortwave radio trasmitters used by the world's intelligence services to send coded messages. They gave it an 8.0, which in the old Pitchfork ratings key, means "very good." I disagree.
I first heard of the Conet Project when I read a Wired article on how Wilco had agreed to pay Irdial, the record company that produced the Conet Project, royalties for the sampling of a Mossad numbers station announcer saying, "Yankee... Hotel... Foxtrot...," which appeared on "Poor Places," one of the best tracks on their 2002 album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Excited by the article's claim that the Conet Project could be found online for free from Irdial, I immediately began looking for it.
The entire four disc collection can be downloaded from Irdial here. Since I knew that these were shortwave radio broadcasts, I am not entirely sure what I was expecting (perhaps four discs full of beautiful female voices repeating cryptic English statements?). The tracks cannot truly be called "music," and is not easy to listen to. If you are not interested in Cold War shortwave broadcasts, then the only purpose that this album could conceivably be used for is sampling.
If you enjoy listening to recordings from the first 15 years of the space program-- those stony all-American voices amid all that static, each transmission punctuated with the electronic beep-- then The Conet Project has obvious appeal.
I assume Mark Richardson enjoyed listening to Russian space program broadcasts in his youth, as the broadcasts contain absolutely no context. The voices announcing the cryptic messages and singing that makes up the Conet Project never change their tone. This is understandable, as entertainment was not their goal.
Interestingly enough, Jay-Z's The Black Album also received a 8.0 from Pitchfork. The acapella version of said album has not yet been reviewed by Pitchfork.
At 5:09 on August 9, 2004, Robert West wrote:
The tracks cannot truly be called ?music,? and is not easy to listen to.
To get an informed insight into why Shortwave noise is not only music but the best music of today, you need to read this great Washington Post article.
Generally, people who think that todays rock bands are "experimental" or "weird" have not heard any of the truely experimental works of the last 50 years of the 20th century, Rock or otherwise.
To say that Short wave recordings, or any sort of recorded sound whatever the source "cannot truly be called ?music?" is to have a very limited definition of what music is. In fact, it is to be in thrall to ideas of what music is that are almost one hundred years old. Nothing wrong with that per se, but it means that you are not qualified to say that the review is wrong in giving that release an 8.0.
Qualifications are not needed to have an opinion of course!
At 6:04 on August 9, 2004, Martey wrote:
Defining music is like defining art; due to personal preference, it is virtually impossible to find a consenus. To me, lyrics are the most important part of music. While The Conet Project has lyrics, their inaccessibility is greater than any band I can think of. Since I like "my" music to has some type of narrative, the Conet Porject lie on the outskirts of my musical taste, along with the Icelandic band Sigur Ros (whose lyrics, predictably, are in Icelandic, a language I assume I will never learn).
I do not doubt that the Conet Project makes good background or ambient music, but I personally find it hard to "engage." Thanks for the heads-up on the Washington Post article; it was an interesting read.