Numbers stations!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station

In tl;dr style, they're a bunch of radio stations operating mostly in the shortwave bands. They transmit on strict schedules, and transmit recordings of a man or woman repeating sequences of numbers and letters, often accompanied by morse and teletype codes. These recordings often stay the same for years at a time.

They're unacknowleged by governments and are believed to be a method of communicating with foreign agents, which would make sense on the basis that a shortwave radio is an unremarkable thing for a foreigner to own.

Some clever buggers have gone ahead and recorded a load. Some sound pretty spooky, with tape drag and atmospherics making them ripe for all sorts of soundtracks and sampling.

www.irdial.com/conet.htm
CD download here.
( multijoy, Fri 2 Dec 2011, 14:32, 7 replies)

I can't believe wikipedia haven't pulled that article.
It's 100% completely made-up bollocks.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Fri 2 Dec 2011, 14:37, closed)

How do you know?

( WormuIus, Fri 2 Dec 2011, 15:03, closed)

The numbers told me.
That and a very lazy perusal of the citations and the talk page.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Fri 2 Dec 2011, 15:34, closed)

This is true
However its usually not a random man or woman, but the BT voice lady.
(Glucose-Maximus All over the world., Fri 2 Dec 2011, 18:08, closed)

She's got an impressive repertoire, and no mistake!
( multijoy, Fri 2 Dec 2011, 20:49, closed)

bugger
I've just sold my scanner too. It would have been interesting trying to find some of these still going.
(dchurch bah, Sun 4 Dec 2011, 10:46, closed)

I downloaded that a while back.
It's cool to be listening on shuffle and suddenly have someone reading things out in foreign languages. I always try to guess which language it is and what the numbers are -- oddly I recognise almost all the numbers which suggests that they're all in Germanic and Slavic languages and no others.
(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Sun 4 Dec 2011, 19:18, closed)