Sounds

[squirmelia]

In The Broken Record episode of Eerie, Indiana, records played backwards give surprising results- Instead of telling the kid to steal milk vans, the backwards messages actually reveal the complaints of his parents, "why don't you tidy your room?", "why don't you get your hair cut?" etc.

I've been listening to songs played in reverse recently, and it has felt retro enough, even without spinning records by hand. There's a list of backmasked messages on the Wikipedia and even songs containing backmasking that you can listen to online. I haven't listened to any that have told me to tidy my room yet though, but perhaps I should.

Last month, I went to the Slow Life exhibition at the John Hansard Gallery, where dubplates began to decay and radios played broadcasts only of consonants and those sounds sometimes still stutter in my mind.

I have wondered what the wind would sound like backwards, the blustery wind that today has been blowing my (nuclear) red hair into my eyes and scattering multi-coloured leaves upwards, into the air. I have wanted to speak only in consonants. I have wanted all sounds to suddenly be reversed, from the whirl of the coffee machine to footsteps behind me.

Comments

[messy-hair-girl.livejournal.com]

Excellent last paragraph.

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I have been enjoying reading your LJ, even though it always tends to make me feel at least a little bit sad also.

[messy-hair-girl.livejournal.com]

Hey -- making people a little sad really must be my magical superpower! Hooray for me!

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

It's a hopeful kind of sad though! Isn't your magical superpower saving cheerleaders?

[messy-hair-girl.livejournal.com]

Of course, but it all ties together. See, if the cheerleaders are too happy all the time, they'll never be interesting or appreciate The Smiths. So, I make them a little sad. Otherwise, all of their co-workers would mash them to bits for clapping and chanting and waving pom-poms over the morning coffee.

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

Ah, that makes sense and sounds very helpful. Indeed, I am glad that no-one in my office is waving pom-poms currently.

[notretro.livejournal.com]

You were always one for sounds.

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

Earlier in the year, I seemed to prefer to listen to silences.

[(Anonymous)]

Good site!

I have a record around here that says "insomniac! I'm asleep..." and says the same thing when played in reverse. I'm not sure that's backmasking actually, probably more of an audio palindrome.

[doctor-bob.livejournal.com]

d'oh... it had logged me out

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

Has it turned you into an insomniac though? ;)

[doctor-bob.livejournal.com]

Would you believe it, I've actually been quite nocturnal and unable to sleep for the past couple of days!

I hadn't dug it out recently though... did you backmask this post perchance?

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

Eek!

I didn't backmask this post, but now am tempted to do a backmasking phone post. :)

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

hehe... so funny that out of all of those snippets, the only two that you can make out ANY sense in the reversed track are those that are blatantly backward samples in the original.

my mother should be made to listen to the Zep one and tell me what it says, if anything! (yes, bitter because I lost my Zep collection to the bonfire twice)

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

I find it a little bit odd that people are still bothering to put backward samples into their music, although I suppose these days it is probably less effort than it once was. I listened to the Tool one last night and that only came out this year.

[pgd.livejournal.com]

The Led Zep sample is by far the "clearest" of the unintentional ones, I thought. Though only after I'd seen the lyrics; beforehand it was just gibberish. Demonstrates the power of suggestion, I suppose.

In particular, to form "Satan": the way we form plurals guarantees there to be backwards words beginning with "S", many of which will have a hard consonant in the middle... and hey presto!

The two Beatles ones which started the whole "Paul Is Dead" thing (which I've just spent a very absorbing half hour reading about on Wikipedia) are just laughable.

Either way, thanks to Squirmelia for a couple of fascinating links on a dull midweek afternoon :)

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

yeah, i listened to them all with the reversed lyrics hidden first, to see if there was anything obvious. like you say, if you have the lyrics there in front of you, you can pick it out.

the only unintentional one that i could vouch for every word given for "reversed lyrics" was the britney one! hehe

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

I started reading about Reverse speech (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_speech) also and that mentioned that the Neil Armstrong quote played backwards is supposed to say "man will spacewalk", but I tried downloading it (http://www.reversespeech.com/Simple_Examples.htm) and playing that backwards, but didn't hear it. Although that site seems to claim that to be able to hear it, it needs slowing down. Hmm.

[pgd.livejournal.com]

The MP3 file from that site includes 3 versions of the reversed speech that get progressively slower. I found I could hear "man will spacewalk" as clearly as those reversed lyrics... which is to say, not very :p

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

When I reversed those myself, they didn't sound like that at all, so am quite dubious.

[pgd.livejournal.com]

Really? Intriguing. I'll try doing it myself when I get home, then. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised.

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

Maybe I just wasn't listening hard enough though. :)

[weremoco.livejournal.com]

Interesting.....

You might like the soundtrack to the sixth sense - where on several occasions backsampling was used to increase the effect.

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I might check that out. Thanks for the suggestion!

[turnedoffneon.livejournal.com]

eerie, indiana! that was a great kid's show.