How can you listen to that? It’s not even stereo

Big shout to regular Imaginary Stations listener Friedrich-Walter Adam in Germany for posting up his clip of the Downbeat on Shortwave show on last weekend’s Imaginary Stations via Shortwave Gold on youtube. 

 

Some say we are mad for listening to different recordings of shortwave shows but each listener, depending on where he or she is, and what they are listening to it on and what time will get a different mix thanks to the groundwaves or the ionosphere and that is something else in our book. But is it in stereo they ask?

The youtube clip features Alpha Seven – Rain chime (beatless remaster) and Múm – There Is A Number Of Small Things (2019 Remaster). It was Justin Patrick Moore who originally recommended Alpha Seven‘s The haunted testcard tapes and here’s two great tracks off it. In stereo.

We’ve got your number

 

Cheers to our good music/gardening/radio friend Justin Patrick Moore for sending over this musical recommendation in an ambient downbeat style called The haunted testcard tapes by Alpha Seven. Haunted Testcard is a lovely bit of electronica and a great one to drift off to. By the way the cover of the LP is great too!

There’s another testcard connection as Pete Roberts of Alpha Seven was also a member of Testcard F, remember them?

 

The next we’ve chosen (above) is a numbers stations related tune and you know we love one of them here. There’s quite a few on Bandcamp if you tap in “Numbers Stations” under the search. Some are of an industrial or harsh experimental nature which all have their place but it is nice to hear something in a more chilled out style. The track even has some morse in there as well. Double radio-related bonus. Cheers for the musical tip Justin.

And by the way if you want to get into a saturday spy mode, pretend you are secret agent 001 and fancy listening to some numbers stations have a look here and see if there’s a transmission coming up.

Don’t worry you don’t need a shortwave radio hidden in a bar of soap or disguised as a loaf of Hovis to listen in, just click the link ( in blue under “Next station in so and so minutes”) and it will bring you to a online SDR (software defined radio) all ready tuned in and ready to decode. Make sure you have a biro and a rough book at the ready.