The "Russian Woodpecker" is a sound I grew up with. My father, a ham radio operator, would be tuning the radio to listen to some faraway country and the signal would get stepped on by this pulsing sound known by radio nerds as the "Russian Woodpecker." He would be infuriated, but I was totally fascinated by this mysterious signal of unknown origin and purpose. Many late nights I would stay up late in my dad's radio shack turning the dial hunting the Russian Woodpecker and dozing off mesmerized by it's incessant mechanical clucking.
I recently learned the Woodpecker's official name was Duga-3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Woodpecker) and was shut down in 1989 as a result of the thawed out Cold War. So I thought I'd make a short sound piece imagining the last 20 minutes of the woodpecker's life and what it might sound like to perform along with it. I made twenty hand-stamped and numbered CD-Rs of this piece for Erik Brown's totally awesome ASCII exhibition of multiples at the California Clipper in Chicago, IL USA on April 27th 2011. For more info on Erik's series check out http://www.archeospiritist.com.
Note: This track is best experienced on headphones or with a nice sub-woofer.
Rob Ray - Bedside Performance with the Russian Woodpecker (Duga-3) by Rob Ray
