Revision as of 07:22, 16 July 2022

A 1970's airliner

Comments

• Near the end of this song is an aural collage of shortwave radio noise. Morse, teletype, and various data signals can be heard including a radio modem (called the Harris RF-5710) used by hobbyists and naval military services. The Morse code heard at 05:20 decodes to "CQ de GM3DP" (a Scottish callsign). A further noted Morse call-sign was interpreted as 'GM3DSK', discovered by Twoism user 'akrotiri'. He also noted that despite a search for the owner of the call-sign initially yielding no results, when removing the 'M' (allegedly a callsign extension used in Scotland), the call-sign can be traced back to the name 'Ra Lord'. It has been speculated that as 'Ra' (Egyptian sun god) takes on the form of a bird in mythology, it relates neatly back to the title of the track - 'Slow This Bird Down'. A second check of UK records showed the GM3DSK callsign to belong to an individual with the initials R. A. Lord, suggesting the connection is pure coincidence.

Samples / Lyrics

Trivia

• "Slow This Bird Down" is pilot jargon for reducing speed during a landing.
• The vocalist Solange sampled this track in its entirety on her 2008 album: Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams. Using the track as a basis for multi-layered vocals, she even referred to the original title in the title of her adaptation: "This Bird".

Videos

Original

Cover

External Links

References