Passed messages

"Passed Messages was inspired by the shortwave radio broadcast recording of a news announcement about a Chinese nuclear bomb test on October 5th, 1969. The recording consists of two parts: The first part, which is the announcers voice (in English with a lot of radio static) and the second part, which is an instrumental song. The song in the second part does not fit with the news about an atomic bomb test; it's from a different time with different mores. To the modern ear, it sounds surreal, almost absurd. 

Passed Messages is a message about a message encoded as a sound piece, where transmissions from the past are received and decoded, interpreted to recreate the message, but data gets lost due to interference and time. The message is always shrouded in noise."

Composition by Thomas Haighton.

Part of the Shortwave Transmissions project, documenting and reimagining the sounds of shortwave radio - find out more and see the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/shortwave