Satanic messages in the computer era
Everyone has heard of stories about hidden messages in songs, many of which could only be heard by playing the record backwards. That was in the vinyl era. CD owners had to rip their songs into wav files and process them with a suitable software tool. For example the manpage of SoX describes its reverse efect as “Reverse the sound sample completely. Included for finding Satanic subliminals”.
Some years ago I was listening to a CD by the Scottish band Urusei Yatsura when I heard the disctintive sound of a ZX Spectrum audio tape in one of its tracks. That sound had already been used several times by some artists (such as Aphex Twin), but this time it was very sharp and sounded like a complete program.
So I loaded it into the emulator and I found a funny satanic message written by the band:
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The source code (it was written in BASIC) had some comments, including this one:
What is sadder?
a. Finding this
b. Writing it
For those interested, this message can be found at the beginning of the song “Thank you” from their last album “Everybody loves Urusei Yatsura”.
You can also load this program using a ZX Spectrum emulator. Get the file in TZX format here.
Posted: January 22nd, 2008 under Planet Igalia, English, Music, Planet GPUL, Planet Maemo, Planet Gnome.
Comments: 13
Comments
Comment from Federico
Time: January 22, 2008, 1:34 am
“Sadder” ?
This is the coolest satanic message I’ve heard of :-)
Comment from Andy Fitzsimon
Time: January 22, 2008, 2:12 am
this has made my day.. is that sad ?
Comment from Karl Lattimer
Time: January 22, 2008, 11:53 am
Yep, made my day too, how geeky are we!
Comment from dave
Time: January 22, 2008, 5:33 pm
There’s a fairly thorough list of such things here:
Comment from berto
Time: January 22, 2008, 11:00 pm
Thanks for the link, Dave! I never heard of some of those
Comment from Jack
Time: January 23, 2008, 5:32 am
lol that’s the coolest (or sad?) easter egg ever!
i wonder if you could decode that if the song was in mp3-format. might be corrupted through the compression.
Pingback from Leiblog » Blog Archive » Satanische Botschaften
Time: January 23, 2008, 9:21 am
[…] Botschaft […]
Comment from berto
Time: January 23, 2008, 10:52 am
Jack, if I remember correctly Spectrum tapes are loadable even in mp3 format.
A Spectrum tape has a very clear sound and it’s probably very easy to compress without introducing artifacts. I’m not an expert but I think that those audio tapes were designed to resist much more distortion than the mp3 compression introduces (which is barely noticeable for the human ear).
Pingback from Musik und Computerspiele | w00titude
Time: January 23, 2008, 10:59 am
[…] Via The world won’t listen. […]
Comment from Faz
Time: February 3, 2008, 7:34 am
LOL! What a find!!
Thanks Berto and Dave for the link!
Finding this so amusing and intriguing may well have been the sadest and geekiest experience of my life, alas I have to confess to small talk with a fax machine. Sorry I didn’t manage to get her model let alone serial number as evidence! Look, it was a long ago!!! I know, I think I still need help… :P
Pingback from Satanische Botschaft für Geeks « Kreativrauschen
Time: February 10, 2008, 8:48 pm
[…] Eine satanische Botschaft für Fortgeschrittene hat Alberto Garcia entdeckt: Die Band Urusei Yatsura hat an den Anfang eines ihrer Stücke ein akustisch kodiertes Computerprogramm platziert, dass eine solche Botschaft auf den Bildschirm schreibt, wenn man es ausführt. :) […]
Comment from Bushido
Time: March 7, 2008, 3:09 am
Lol - wtf! Some people have too much time ;)
Pingback from Satanic Message for Computer Geeks « Creation Noise
Time: April 19, 2008, 9:37 pm
[…] » Satanic messages in the computer era […]
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