‘Number Stations’ broadcast coded messages to secret agents. They are very, very creepy, as the example above (which will be familiar to Stereolab fans) ‘The Swedish Rhapsody’ shows. The Cubans, Americans, Russians, Polish, Hungarians, English, Germans. We are all at it, sending creepy coded messages around the world. And there is absolutely no way that you can decode a message unless you are the recipient who holds the ‘one time pad’ key, a translation of the numbers which is valid only for specific broadcasts on specific days, probably hidden in a spy watch or a hollowed out spy book.

I read up on them and listened to any recordings that I could find. They fascinated me. They started to trouble me a bit. They’re pretty troublesome – creepy disembodied voices, sometimes gongs or chimes that sound as though they are played from tape loops that have stretched over time, we don’t know exactly where they come from and we don’t know exactly where they are going to. I found them troublesome until I discovered, in an interview with an ex KGB officer, that the vast majority of the messages are, in fact, personal messages from family and loved ones to the spy in hiding. This new bit of knowledge made a whole lot of difference, the broadcasts lost some of their creepiness, and I wrote a song about them to celebrate.

text by Graeme Wilson

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Words of Love Broadcast In Code is The Projects latest long player.

Ladytron’s Mira Aroyo guests with vocals on 4 of the songs. One being Planets.

You can hear a few more tracks & help make it the Christmas number one at www.mindexpansionrecords.com

More backstage pictures of the Booba/Laura Satana shoot with photographer Julien Lachaussée!

The gorgeous Mrs Lydia Lunch talking about the last song of her set yesterday with Big Sexy Noise in Bern

Lydia Lunch for Sang Bleu from Maria Trofimova on Vimeo.

About a month ago I chanced upon The Devil. Just a stones throw from the East London mosque. Not all their songs are this rude but they are all this good.

I went with photographer Julien Lachaussée to Laura Satana’s tattoo studio: XXXOTIC TATTOO in Paris to make an interview & photoshoot with herself and famous french rapper Booba. Fun!

(Laura is much sweeter than she looks on the picture here! ;)

In the video: producer Mathieu AKA Dolor, Laura, Booba, Julien Lachaussée, Mathias (Laura’s apprentice)

shooting Laura Satana & Booba for sang bleu 5 from Sang Bleu on Vimeo.