Webhamster Henry's Top 10 Imaginary Recordings of 2005
this top ten list goes up to 11
  1. Noch Ein Bier, Bitte (Kinky Boots, 2005/1962)
    For Beatle completists only, this is about ten minutes of tape from the famous Hamburg "Star-Club" recordings, but only the sounds of the crowd and what sounds like John and Ringo trying to order a beer.
  2. Water on the Ear: Mahicanuk (Briny Records, 2004)
    One of a series of audio renditions of important American bodies of water. A simple fishing bob is tracked with a laser pointer and home-made detector for eight hours, and the resulting data sped up to audio rates.
  3. PsyOp Report CH-5046A/nc (Milspec Records, 1967)
    This audio supplement to an Army Psychological Operations report during the Cold War documents the speech patterns and unique ideolect of the coldest cold warriors: soldiers confined to missile silos and monitoring stations in Greenland, Alaska and Canada. One group of these men had no entertainment available to them save a few Army educational films on re-enlistment, hygiene and so on, and as their stints wore on, all their vocabularies were reduced to phrases found in these four films. Original audio snippets from the films are followed with conversations between the soldiers, showing their exact mimicking of the film's pitch, emphasis and rhythm.
  4. DJ Softee, Vol. II (I Scream Records, 2005)
    In this sophomore tribute compilation, 8-bit Gameboy composers take on the Mr. Softee Theme. Right up there with Vol. I!
  5. Return To Sender (Mail Ops, 2005)
    Experimental sound artist Holga Becker modded up her Mp3 recorder to run extra slowly, stuck it in a package and mailed it to her self. Hear the sounds of travel, other packages (what's that ticking noise?), sorting machines, mutterings of the postal employees and lots of bumps.

    This just in: there are at least two very similar real world recordings like this:

    thanks to: Brian, Robin, Scott, Douglas. I'll try harder next year!

  6. Hurricane Watch Roundup (Major Media News, 2005)
    The record number of Atlantic Tropical storms this year kept extreme weather fans on their toes all season! Here is an audio montage of weather reports of all 26 named storms of the 2005 season.
  7. DONDI! the Musical tryouts ( 7" open reel 1957/2004)
    Cleaning out my great uncle's file cabinets turned up this reel, a musical treatment of heartstring tugging adventures of the comic strip's plucky Italian orphan boy and GI's who take care of him. Some of these songs turned up in the 1961 film made of the same material.
  8. 990-1111 (*69 Records, 2005)
    It's the battle of the ring-tones, as a room full of mobile telephones and similar devices are called or paged in a carefully scored, almost lyrical piece, with automated phone messages mixed in as lyrics. Recorded in exquisite binaural stereo, it MUST be listened to with headphones, although there is a number you can call to hear lo-fi excerpts over the phone!
  9. Sue Doe Q (Jason Code 2005)
    Algorithmic composition in just intonation based on the popular Sudoku puzzles.
  10. even the oven breaks tuesdays (overpoets 2005)
    ponies, in their rustled braids, felicitate and pontificate from their lax plinths and trickle dross vinegar hyphens from the uneasy wheeze of pestilent offal. hinder! hinder! hinder the cracking of poppyseed cakes, lush with lemon, filleted with creme fraiche and currants! i bend the tines of the oncoming wheelbarrow, splashing the guano, the anthrax smoothie. this one is the one to pull!

    Enthusiastic and logorrheic poetry by Silvia M. , upstate NY poetry fixture.
  11. A Harry Partch Christmas (CBS, 1972)
    Partch's Delusion of the Fury was burning up the charts in 1971, and the Record Execs at CBS were salivating over the untapped microtonal crossover market. Behind Harry's back, some of the more easily bribed members of the Ensemble snuck in during the morning hours and recorded these arrangements of Christmas Classics, bent into new forms as they were transposed to 43-tone Just intonation and mimicking Partch's polyrhythmic, corporeal aesthetic.