Some of you long-time visitors to thelocustDOTorg may remember the “tribute” I did for the CONET project from Irdial Discs. It is a four-disc set of recordings of shortwave “numbers” stations, and I originally heard about them from the title of Wilco‘s excellent “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” album. The title sprang from a clip they used from the CONET project at the end of their “Poor Places” track of a young girl repeating “Yankee… Hotel… Foxtrot…” (the lead-in for the “Phonetic Alphabet NATO” track on the CONET discs). Kelly and I originally heard this track on our honeymoon, whilst in a rainstorm in St. Louis. It was hella creepy! (but awesome). Later, my interest was piqued and I set up my CONET tribute.

Fast-forward two years, and we see that after a two-year legal battle (previously unknown to me), IRDIAL is being reimbursed by Jeff Tweedy for royalties. I had assumed that Wilco had cleared it, but apparently not. Wired has a good article summing this up, entitled Wilco Pays Up for Spycasts .

It should be pointed out that Irdial has put some of their assets into the public domain under their Open Content system, and you can download their entire catalog (if you can find a mirror) for free personal, non-commercial use. I have mirrored the 4-disc CONET set and accompaning PDF in my CONET tribute.