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Found tape archives reveal snippets of human history in the strangest of ways

When we heard about Nervesandgel's ambitious project to get sounds from friends last week, we started looking into the idea of digitized found sound recordings. A few days later, we finally crawled out of the Internet's rabbit hole with some interesting results and a peek into the private lives of...
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When we heard about Nervesandgel's ambitious project to get sounds from friends last week, we started looking into the idea of digitized found sound recordings. A few days later, we finally crawled out of the Internet's rabbit hole with some interesting results and a peek into the private lives of people we've never met.

The basic premise of found cassettes is an age-old noise musician's trick. Hitting up garage sales, thrift stores or you parents basement and ransacking unmarked cassettes often leads to incredibly interesting sounds. Sweet Thunder specializes in distributing these types of recordings in an ongoing weekly project.

There are some truly remarkable finds hidden in here, like a recording of a man in 1957 reading astrology, or a little kid's band called Human Skab, recording his demo and talking about how he wants to make a lot of money. There are hours upon hours of entertainment hidden in these archives.

On that same note, we also came across The Voicemail Project, which, as the name implies, is a collection of unusual voicemails people have left on other people's machines. Included are accidental recordings, like this one of a kid accidently pocket dialing his mom and leaving a message about smoking pot.

Hidden inside these archives are glimpses into the psyche of real people across several decades. Captured on tape are kids doing the news, deer calling instructions and so much more. There is an abundance of resource material for musicians looking to include something a little more quirky and strange in their mix.

Now if we could just find someone with a copy of the crazy religious cassette, "The Reality of Hell," that someone used to leave around Denver, we'd be all set.


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