A few years ago, veteran Montreal musician, photographer and filmmaker Toby Andris was sifting through boxes at a Budapest flea market when he came across quite a find. It was a box of quarter-inch tapes together with a notebook filled with numbers and names scribbled on the thin blue lines of the ledger paper inside.
As the story goes, references inscribed to the 4625 kHz frequency lead Andris on a months-long investigation during which he was able to trace the tapes to “the now well-known, though poorly documented, ‘buzzer’ number station transmissions, used to transmit covert messages to spies during the Cold War.”
The tapes contain recordings of short wave radio station scans from the KGB’s Cold War era. Andris believes the tapes are from the late 60s or early 70s. On some tapes, as he discovered, there are sections where the scanning pauses long enough to capture an unknown piece of music “obscured by hiss and dirt and the tape’s natural demagnetization and decay.”
Hauntingly affected by this mysterious music, Andris set out to replicate, interpret and expand on the the dusty, bygone era recordings in order to create all new sounds, styles and other audio and musical influences. To take his vision to the next level, he needed help.
Andris set out to create a band, simply named Thin Blue Line, that featured himself on guitar, synth, and sampling, and veteran indie and alt rock musicians Greg Paquet (The Stills, Peter Peter), Mathieu Dumontier (Kiss Me Deadly, Le Husky), and Michel Aubinais (Hey Hey My My, FareWell Poetry, SAF).
“Matt and Michel I’d played with in my previous band, Statue Park, and they’re incredibly talented and inventive musicians,” he said. “I also knew they’d be open to trying something different like this.”
Much of the EP is of course music composed by Andris. In fact, the tapes serve mainly as an inspiration for the songs the band recorded for the EP. And yet it’s a rare musical project that actually incorporates snippets from actual Soviet spay transmissions.
“The tapes mainly contain what sounds like someone scanning the radio airwaves, probably listening to intercept other spy transmissions,” he says “But the operator [of the Budapest station allegedly] was also transmitting secrets via the airwaves. In his case, it sounded like an intermittent buzzer for an intercom, and every once in a while that was interrupted by lists of names and numbers.”
In April, after months of recording, mixing and mastering, the band dropped it’s self-titled EP, Thin Blue Line.
The collection of mixed genres and styles – instrumental, post rock, post punk/C86, and krautrock – like the glistening and dreamy, “Tungsten Fields,” and the fragmented, radio intercepts of “Telegraph 3am,” are unique and original, especially when you consider how amazing it is that the tracks are inspired by, and featuring, excerpts of rare Cold War-era KGB radio transmissions.
“Tungsten Fields“ – Thin Blue Line from Thin Blue Line EP
“We still have a lot of tapes to sift through,” Andris added, “so it wouldn’t be surprising if future installments of our recordings should eventually surface.”
This past summer, Andris moved to Paris, which he plans to use as a home base while “scouring the former eastern bloc for more tapes.”
“Telegraph 3am“ – Thin Blue Line from Thin Blue Line EP