Very excited to have been a part of this project as curator and contributor. Head on over to Public Spaces and download the entire album in MP3 and Flac format. If you like the tracks check out the artists other work and maybe buy some more of it, support them so they can make some more. In the mean time Numbers Stations is freely available under Creative Commons license. We hope you enjoy it.

The Colorado Project Part 1 from JP Sykes on Vimeo.

Track can be downloaded:

The Colorado Project Part 1 by madebyrobot

http://soundcloud.com/madebyrobot/the-colorado-project/download.aif

Very happy to announce that Penguins is now available for download on iTunes and Amazon MP3 store. We’re also working on a limited edition CD run that will be available in Jan 2010 for release in conjunction with the new Made By Robot Store (more news on that after the holidays).

The Numbers Stations, compilation project has been compiled and passed off to the awesome folks over at PublicSpaces Lab netlabel.

The current release date is Jan 15th 2010, on the public spaces lab releases section.

I’m very excited about this project, it was great to work with such a talented group of artists who provided such a broad range of tracks, that all still had a common root sound – samples of shortwave recordings from so called ‘numbers stations’.

I’m already thinking we might need to repeat the challenge in the new year since I think we may have only scratched the surface of what is possible with these excellent audio soundscapes.

Image courtesy of Slightly North

I was deeply honored when James Lowery (Swaying Smoke) contacted me to let me know he’d been working on a remix of Thursday Afternoon the opening track on Penguins (link to iTunes). I was even happier when I heard his mix, which I think paints a nice spin on the original. Many thanks James.

And don’t forget if you’re interested in working on a mix or a totally new track using the raw stems, they are all available on my Band Camp site, just let me know what you do with them.

They are up on my bandcamp site. I’m releasing them as I did the entire album under CC-NC-A license, and I’m hoping some will take on the challenge and remix them to oblivion. If you have any questions whilst remixing don’t hesitate to ask. If I get enough volume of remixes I’ll put together a little compilation and and maybe see if I can get a netlabel to release it free.

If you make a remix, please let me know how it comes out, I’d love to hear what people do with the stems and if I get enough feedback I’ll be sure to put them together and make them available as a free download on my bankcamp site.

If you need an easy way to send the tracks to me, just use my soundcloud drop box:

Send me your track

The Penguins release is now out (as of last weekend), it’s available as a free (or name your price) download over at bandcamp.

I hope you enjoy it.

I have 3 new projects in the works, one being producing the Number Stations various artists which will be released on Public Spaces Lab netlabel. Then 2 new additions that will be slightly different from Penguins. Those combined with continued hardware hacking efforts have me very busy indeed.

I’m also releasing 3 of the tracks from Penguins as full stems for people to remix and use under creative commons nc-a license, I’m really excited to see what comes out. If I get a good response to that, I’ll bundle them into a compilation album and make it available.

Number Stations if you are unfamiliar are shortwave radio stations that broadcast strange and cryptic content, often ordered or seemingly random series of numbers repeated over and over again. Other stations played weird music, and other still just repeated tones over an over. They were all the rage back in the Coldwar era and are often thought to have been spying agencies means of communication.

Probably the most famous Number Station sample is from the Wilco album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, partly due to the album being named after it but maybe more so because it lead to complex legal wrangles over who “owned” the recording, eventually settled out of court.

The most authoritative collection of Numbers Stations recordings is the Conet Project by Irdial Records, who make available the entire collection under their Free Music Philosophy. There are also plenty of other places online to find other samples that can be used in recordings as samples (my so called 3 note oddity used in my track comes from this very informative site).

So now you have the background, here’s my idea. I’d like to get 10-15 tracks together, and release them through an established netlabel free. My current netlabel of choice is the Barcelona based Public Spaces Lab (I’ve contacted them and they seem very interested).

If you are an electronic musician, of any flavor and would like to make a piece that heavily uses samples taken from Number Stations recordings and then make it publically available for nothing, either drop me an email mail at madebyrobot dot com, or leave a comment below and drop me a message on twitter @madebyrobot.

I’ll keep a running list here of people who have expressed interest in contributing:

- Made By Robot
- Kieron James
- Ambienteer (James Fahy)
- FixateMusic
- Svanbommel
- Mrbitterness
- I Am Genko
- Battery Collection
- % (aka Owner Operator)
- Martin Backes
- Weather Balloons (Dave Barber)
- Oicho

For anyone interested in submitting and those who already have listed above, I will need the following for Public Spaces Lab at some point:

What we need from you is the following:
Every artist involved in the release, including yourself should provide us with:
1. Small Bio (300 words max)
2. High Resolution Photo

All artists have to agree to being released under a Creative Commons License 3.0 Unported by-nc-nd.

I have setup my soundcloud drop box for submissions, if you have a soundcloud account you can just keep the track private and share it with me that would be great.

http://soundcloud.com/madebyrobot/dropbox/

Summerless Part 1 by Madebyrobot on Mixcloud

summerless pt1 – on mixcloud