Re: The Dreaming & Backmasking

[jeffy@lewhoosh.umd.edu (Jeffrey C. Burka)]

Scott Telford writes:

>A few weeks ago, me and a friend of mine who has an Emax sampling
>keyboard (and a few KaTe CDs) tried sampling some of her backmasks and playing
>them backwards - we tried "Leave it Open" and "Watching You Without Me".

>The "We let the wierdness in" does (as has been reported before) sound
>like "They said they were very ill" backwards, although the "ill" is a
>bit peculiar.

I've never had any success in getting "We let the weirdness in" to sound
like anything.

>The "Zoh-nikh-noh, zoh-nikh no nee..." bit from WYWM doesn't seem to
>make any more sense backwards either, which is most puzzling.

That's because it's not back-masked.  This was KaTe's trick question, and the
answer is that it's sung forward, in english, and once you know what it is,
it's quite clear (and makes perfect sense in the song's context):

Don't ignore, don't ignore me, let me in and don't be long


>The "Weeee seeee..." bits in WYWM sound much the same backwards as forwards.

Um, no, it sounds completely different (at least I think so...).  It's a rather
clear "We see you here" when played in reverse.  As most fans should know,
played "forward" it sounds sorta like a garbled "we really see you" or "we
recede" or something like that.  It's quite clear when played backwards, but
it's kinda hard to get past the absolutely breathtaking thing KaTe is doing
with her voice--sort of a vocal waterfall.

>The chopped-up "Help me baby" etc. bit has the same words (or something
>similar) backmasked between the forward-recorded bits, so it sounds
>pretty much identical both ways.

I found the first one to sound roughly the same in forward/reverse.  The second
such portion in "Watching You Without Me" sounds like there are different
words inserted backwards.


Jeff
-- 
|Jeffrey C. Burka                |  Life is a lot like the Freak Show     |
|                                |  Nobody laughs when they leave.        |
|jeffy@lewhoosh.umd.edu          |                     --The Residents    |