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+Bank Holiday - Digging old CB gear/Samples/Scanner

Bank holiday weekends are great, no work, and time to do stuff. We hit three car boot sales and gathered a decent haul of CB radio equipment and reel to reel players, all with a mind to some kind of sound production.

As a teenager in the 1990's the CB (or Citizen's Band as it was known) was a communication staple. Almost 20 years to the day, I was revising for a Science GCSE with my buddy Dave, over the CB. My equipment has pretty much sat unused in the studio for a couple of decades now.

I picked up the CB microphone in the picture for a few quid and it reminded me of the good old days of winding people up over the airways and playing music to people regardless of if they wanted to hear it or not!

So with much excitement I plugged in the the old rig over the weekend, perched an aerial in the loft, and switched on the requisite 13.8 volt power supply (Old CB's were generally designed for mobile, car/van use from a battery).

Initially I was baffled as to why I couldn't hear anything. Nothing. Simply radio static. I scrolled through the channels (All 40 of 'em!) regularly listening out for any signs of life, and nothing.

Then, on Sunday evening I hear a conversation between a couple of old lads on channel 38. A bit of internet detective work online revealed that they operate an 'old boys' network on that channel called "Last of the Summer Wine". Apt.

Then it dawned on me, CB is another example of largely obsolete technology, it works fine, but has been left behind as newer technologies for communication roll on; mobile phones/internet et al...

Alas, hearing these old lads still using the same gear was heart warming. My earnest nostalgia passed and I began to think about ways to use this equipment for recordings. You see, these old lads came out with some gems which are easily sample-able using the CB output jack....

All of this led to a trail of thought which ended up at an artist called Scanner. Back in my days working at Earache Records (a label infamous for its grindcore), there was this album called 'Delivery' by Scanner that was a haunting listen, and a world away from the other heavier releases on the label. Have a listen to the link below (the only one on youtube I could find from the album) and listen out for the Radio/CB/Scanner noises he samples to creepy effect:

In other news, our compilation release is rolling along nicely, with plenty of acts signing up for the release tentatively planned for the summer. Stay tuned for details as we firm them up.

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