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Confidence Tone

from Tape 1054 by D/BAM

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about

When I was 12, my family moved to a house which contained a WB1400 receiver; the unit that issued the 4 minute warning. The previous owner had been a civil defence volunteer and was responsible for raising the alarm for the village in the event of a nuclear attack. "Confidence Tone" was the name given to the pip sounds used to reassure users of the HANDEL nuclear attack warning system receivers that their equipment was working OK. The system was silent unless being tested but if a user was anxious that their equipment may have failed, the confidence tone could be heard at the push of a button on the front of the case. Having this device in the house horrified my Mum who was an active CND campaigner. The HANDEL early warning system was eventually shut down in 1992 at the end of the Cold War, although ours had been disconnected previously at my Mum's insistence. We lived really close to a large nuclear air base, many children at my school were from RAF families and we would regularly hear and see war planes, missile transporters and troops moving about the area. It was a paranoid, confusing and unnerving time which I have reflected on here.  

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from Tape 1054, released January 17, 2020

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D/BAM UK

Opportunistic sound recordings, manipulated to explore, among other things, the ways in which nature, natural sound, human activity and human-made sound interact, affect and distort one another, and to interrogate the internal and imagined sounds experienced during periods of mood disturbance, dissociation and insomnia. ... more

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