Another fine release by Sonologyst, the Italian solo act Raffaele Pezzella. He’s had a good run of releases for Cold Spring which indicate his various preoccupations with cold war paranoia, UFOs, extraterrestrial visitations, and government cover-ups of all the above (all brilliantly suggested by sleight of hand editing and selected clips). Further weirdness emanates from the Unexplained Sounds Group, co-curated by Sonologyst, a natural magnet for alternative music and unusual sounds of many varieties.
Today’s item from his troubled brain is called Shortwave Spectrum (COLD SPRING RECORDS CSR332CD), and is themed mostly on the use of shortwave radio receivers. Sonologyst has collated – or been given access to – a large collection of recordings dating as far back as 1982, and uses these along with his analogue synths, tape recorders, and extensive reprocessing tools, to assemble this set of disturbing, mesmerising, dark ambient tones. The underling assumption here is that these radio transmissions were being used by military and espionage agencies, particularly in the post-war period, either to send coded messages or perhaps for even more nefarious, unknown purposes. One aspect of this, quite well known by now, is Numbers Stations; I first heard about this odd phenomenon in 1997 when the Conet Project box set of CDs was released. Its compiler Akin Fernandez was thoroughly convinced of the “covert” nature of these numbers stations, and wrote a passionate booklet for the release in which he couldn’t wait to start slinging blame at everyone from MI5 to the CIA, as well as any number of Russian and Eastern European spy rings. Although his stories were plausible, Akin Fernandez didn’t feel the need to provide much verifiable evidence to make his case, and simply assumed his readership was already on his side against the “bad guys”. Speculative anecdotes emerged of where, how, and when these stations might operate, and how agents in the field might use them (for instance, by posing as a cab driver with a radio in the car); Fernandez was only too happy to go down the rabbit hole of coded messages and single-use keypad encryption methods, before ushering us into a strange world of underground resistance, apparently comprising young idealists collaborating online to document the activities of the shortwave stations, and attempt their own non-sanctioned “Enigma” styled decoding operation.
Around the same time, Disinformation (Joe Banks) was also using SW receivers to produce his mysterious sound art experiments, although he had a wider sweep (including signals from outer space) and a quasi-scientific approach to his work; there was also Scanner, although I’m not sure if he ever took much interest in spies, numbers stations, or espionage. Since then, Numbers Stations have become much more mainstream; I think recordings were used by Hollywood in Vanilla Sky, and certainly appeared in the odd horror movie Banshee Chapter (2013), but the aim of the sound design crew was mainly to inject a “creepy” atmosphere into the movie with disembodied, distorted voices. You can also find no end of clips on YouTube, some of them enhanced with unsettling visuals, but nobody seems very interested in finding out much more about them. However, let’s return to our moutons – Numbers Stations are but one part of Sonologyst’s record, which is more of a focussed effort to repurpose, collage, and layer all manner of shortwave sounds into an aesthetically pleasing whole; the label calls it “cinematic sound art”, which isn’t too far off the mark. The interesting thing is how subdued the music is, suggesting an effect whereby information is entering your consciousness by stealth, as if sliding under your carapace at night when you’re asleep or distracted. This is quite a contrast to Silencers: The Conspiracy Theory Dossiers from 2018, which I seem to recall had a much more alarmist tone.
Once you’ve heard the six tracks of burnished, highly-processed and layered ambient darkitude on the first disc, you can enjoy the “List of Shortwave Sources” on the second disc. There’s 22 separate samples here (although not indexed), and although it’s evident Raffaele Pezzella is well-informed about these recordings from Russia, East Germany, Chine, Korea, and elsewhere, he declines to provide much concrete detail (e.g. dates) in his perfunctory notes, and even less by way of verification. Even so, it’s a deliciously thrilling and spine-tingling listen, as we hear odd strings of numbers, letters, non-English messages, and generally perplexing sounds and call signals emerging through the quagmire of distortion and mingling with artefacts from the shortwave band. Whatever the origin of these numbers stations, one can’t help but find some perverse pleasure in the paranoid-inducing thrills on offer. I particularly liked the “unknown cold war transmissions” purporting to date from 1970; for something more topical, tune in to the Russian broadcast recorded one hour after the invasion of Ukraine.
Perhaps not the most original or inventive release from Sonologyst to date, but the theme fits in perfectly with his general plan. From 15th January 2024.