The Black Tapes S01E09 - Name That Tune

Alex Reagan: The Black Tapes is brought to you by Rocket Sound. Who better to sponsor an episode about a terrible song that will usher in the end of days, an aria proclaimed by the forsaken, a chorus cried out by damned angels as their blood-splattered feathers fall from blackened wings, than the world’s leading provider of audio engineering services? Nobody, that’s who.

The Black Tapes is also sponsored by Stamps.com. Enter the promo code “TheBlackTapes” for this special offer: You see them, but they don’t see you, not yet. But they will, oh yes they will, because they know when you can see them, and it’s only a matter of time before their blind eyes open and turn towards you. Yes, due to budget constraints the US Postal Service is now staffed exclusively by blind cannibals who hunt using a rudimentary form of echolocation, and their favorite pray is the hapless fool who wanders too deeply into the Post Office. But with Stamps.com you can avoid this hellish trap and send your packages and letters all around the world without risking life and limb.

Stamps.com: we promise not to cannibalize you.

Alex Reagan: Hi Dr Strand! So my producer said that he was going to skin me alive and feed me to an inter-dimensional void if I didn’t ask you about that tape of Coralee we found, and while I don’t exactly understand what’s happening on his podcast, it sounds like he might actually be able to do it. So how about an interview?

Richard Strand: I suppose now is as good a time as any to discuss the painful revelation of my wife’s final words, broadcast without my permission on your podcast, which is supposed to be about scientific truth but is instead a smear job designed to ruin my credibility in the skeptics’ community.

Alex Reagan: Great! So how did hearing her voice make you feel? Sad? Lonely? Overcome with the guilt that can only be felt by a man who snuffed the life out of his one-time lover in a fit of demonic rage?

Richard Strand: It was … difficult. She sounded like herself, instead of the demon-possessed creature of spite and loathing that she had morphed into in the last few weeks of our marriage. It was nice to remember a time when she wasn’t climbing the walls, defying gravity through sheer power of malice, and hurling accusations about long-hidden sins in the wicked voice of a twice-damned abomination. Also I helped her with that thesis paper she was talking about.

Alex Reagan: Wait a second …

Nic Silver: Hi Alex! So I spoke to Coralee’s parents, and they sent me a list of all of her friends, a USB drive with a clone of her cellphone, a series of boxes containing hundreds of documents, including medical information, legal records, utility bills, the contract she mad with Beelzebub offering her soul in exchange for a seat at his right hand in the coming conflagration, and her day planners for the five years leading up to her disappearance.

Alex Reagan: Wow! If that information had been provided to the police, they might have been able to solve this mystery!

Nic Silver: Right, and that would leave us with nothing to talk about, so we sure did get lucky! Anyway, in that stack of papers I found a printed-out email, faded to near illegibility, which indicated that Coralee was talking to a woman named Tina Stevens in Tahoe!

Tina Stevens in Tahoe: Hi guys! I don’t know what a podcast is, but I do know that I am the proprietor of the number-one grocery store slash bus station slash post office slash secret temple to the foul god Slatheen slash bait shop in Tahoe, and I also know that your mysterious email was from a lady named Lisa Graves who had a post office box right here in my store!

Alex Reagan: And according to this yearbook, Lisa Graves was Coralee’s roommate! Do you know what this means?

Nic Silver: Sexy pillow fights?

Alex Reagan: I was thinking Coralee used Lisa’s name to open a secret mail drop, but I guess your thing might have happened too.

Alex Reagan: Okay Dr. Strand, let’s have this out once and for all! I think you’re unfairly discounting this very clear evidence of the supernatural, simply because it doesn’t fit into your narrow world view!

Richard Strand: Jesus, are we arguing about that woman’s hair again? I told you, Alex, you can get a blue-to-purple ombre fade in any salon in Seattle. The fact that you saw a woman with shimmering, magical hair doesn’t mean pixies are real, it means she works at Starbucks.

Keith Dabic (via Skype) Hi Alex! This is Keith from Hastur Rising. Just a quick update. I played that Unsound thing for a few friends of mine, and one of them was promptly eaten by a bear, the other one drowned in his bath tub cradling a plugged-in toaster, the third was consumed by tongues of fire that fell from the sky, and the fourth vomited up all of his blood, then proceeded to stagger around the room for the next hour, proclaiming the infernal glory of Kalthazar the Unkind in what I think was ancient Etruscan.

Anyway, that kinda freaked me out so I moved to Russia and joined a monastery founded by this guy named Percival Black. He claims that he can undo the Unsound, and by “undo” he means “save my life” and not “use me as a pawn in his grand scheme to unmake the world through the power of the Devil’s music.” He was really clear on that last part. Like, he repeated five or six times that he has no intention of using my soul as the final sacrifice to the dark god he worships only in secret, so I’m pretty confident.

Also, I emailed you an MP3 called “symphony of sorrows” that Percival said you should play for all of your listeners as soon as possible, and he also said to make sure you don’t let any holy men hear it before the broadcast. Anyway, it’s time for our ritual lashings, so I’ve gotta go. Later!

Alex Reagan: In addition to an audio recording that would flay my soul and boil my eyes, Keith sent me an email containing photos from the the journal of Alexander Scriabin. Nic did some research for me:

Nic Silver: Okay, so Alexander Scriabin was a Russian composer, pianist, and madman. He injured his hand and doctors were unable to fix it, which led to what you might call a crisis of faith, and by crisis of faith I mean he started composing sonatas designed to tear YHWH off his throne and force him to watch the crumbling of his once-majestic creation. The journal pages we were sent contain a handful of musical pieces, which when played sound like the shrieking cries of a dying seraph, along with the number 1.01364335043922, apparently etched in blood, and the statement “I am come to tell you the secret of life, the secret of death, the secret of heaven on earth, I am god, I am nothing, I am life.” repeated over and over and over again.

Alex Reagan: Okay, so where do we go from here?

Nic Silver: There’s only one option. We need to find someone knowledgeable of … classical Russian music. PNWS Boom

Professor Allen Downs: Alexander Scriabin? Oh yeah, he’s one of my favorites! A pure genius, could have been the next Mozart, except he composed music designed to bring low god above and elevate himself to the throne of heaven. His music was so wicked that the church banned the notes that he played, and he was accused by some of attempting to usher in a new era of darkness and torment. There were also rumors that he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for access to the secrets of the universe. He was a really wacky guy!

Nic Silver: Hi Alex! No luck on the hunt for Keith Dabic, and I called everyone in Tobin’s Field Guide to Satanic Brotherhoods, but still couldn’t find a way to contact Percival Black, but I did sign you up for a math class at Washington State University!

Alex Reagan: Okay Nic, making me deal with demon possessed music is one thing, but making me take a math class is just a bridge too far!

–

PhD Candidate Sandra Sing: Hi Alex! So I got Nic’s email, and I think I have all the answers you need! See, a few years ago there was this TED talk about Vortex-based mathematics, which was supposed to be a grand unifying theory that would usher in a new age of enlightenment and truth, except it was 100% refined bullshit and the guy who gave the talk was a paranoid schizophrenic. But, this guy named Rubin Neil did a bunch of LSD and realized that a certain ratio, which we call the Pythagorean comma, actually fills in the structural gaps in an entire field of tessellated geometry, which lends credence to the Platonic notion that math is a naturally occurring truth that mankind discovers instead of invents, meaning we can in fact grasp the fundamental structure of the universe without appealing to supernatural answers. Was that clear enough?

Alex Reagan: … so if I were to compose music using 1.01364335043922 as the primary step between notes?

PhD Candidate Sandra Sing: Oh, well one of two things would happen. That music would either fit neatly into a crack in the universe, sealing it once and for all and protecting us from the invading hordes of shadow demons intent on devouring our life forces, or we would find out that it’s the resonance frequency necessary to turn that crack into a gaping chasm, rending the veil between this world and the next, shattering our only protection from those vile things that would put an end to the light and unleash the howling darkness upon our unready souls. It could go either way.

Alex Reagan: Wow, math really is interesting!

Nic Silver: Hey Alex! So Keith Dabic sent us another sound file, called ununsound.mp3, and insisted that we play it immediately, “lest our careless arrogance unleash a torrent of death upon the podcast listeners ’round the world,” and I’m starting to think that he’s doing all of this to promote the next Hastur Rising album. Oh, and Percival Black called, but I told him you were busy taking Remedial Geometry for Exorcists and would have to call him back.

Alex Reagan: Do you know what’s worse than spending an afternoon listening to a math geek explain the intricacies of topographical vortex morphology, then spending your evening listening to a guy working on his Master’s in classic Russian composition, who hasn’t had a girl talk to him in about six years and who is a super nice guy and you really just need to give him a chance and no he isn’t weird he just wants to dress up like Rasputin while you pretend to be Anastasia and try to escape him but oops you tripped and now he has you and what evils shall he work upon your tender, willing flesh? Going to the post office, that’s what’s worse. If they had a Stamps.com for esoteric research, I wouldn’t need to carry so much pepper spray.

Brother Perceval Black: Hi Alex! I was informed by my team of flying, bat-winged monkeys that you were interested in my music! Right now I’m working on a group of related, sacred compositions that will bring me closer to God!

Alex Reagan: So music is how you worship?

Brother Perceval Black: Oh no! By “bring me closer to God” I mean my music is intended to bring forth my ascension, allowing me to transcend this weak, mortal shell and assume the full mantle of the divine, an act which shall of course send this mewling universe spinning off into eternal darkness, reducing it to a cold, burning ember populated with ruined souls and shattered spirits, but it is a darkness I shall rule and an emptiness I shall command, and as the Lightbringer declared, verily is it better to rule in hell than to bend the knee in heaven.

Alex Reagan: Wow, that’s sure to be a chart topper! Say, do you know a kid named Keith Dabic, or have you heard of a composer named Alexander Scriabin?

Brother Perceval Black: What? Why no, I have never met the lead singer of Hastur Rising and I have no interest at all in a composer who was declared a heretic of the first order by the Church, that old enemy of mine which I pretend to serve while in fact seeking the keys that will allow me to destroy all that which is holy and pure!

Alex Reagan: That’s a real bummer. We were certain you’d be able to help us with our investigation!

Nic Silver: So I’ve been doing some research, and I discovered that Alexander Scriabin’s last composition was called the Mysterium. It was intended to be performed by a cult of blind and deaf monks on top of the Himalayan mountains, and its unholy noise was meant to be the soundtrack of the apocalypse. The very act of playing this music would cause the universe to implode, and the human race would be wiped out, replaced by a sect of shadow demons with upside-down faces. One guy tried to record what he thought the Mysterium was supposed to sound like, but according to my structural acoustician friends, there were slight errors in the musical notation he was working from. I believe that the music Keith Dabic sent us is the real Mysterium, and that playing the music recorded therein will destroy all of creation.

Alex Reagan: So of course you …

Nic Silver: Sent Keith’s corrected version to Rocket Sound to see what they could do with it.

Alex Reagan: Of course you did.

Nic Silver: I also contacted the American Embassy in Russia, the FBI, the KGB, and Interpol, but they were wholly uninterested in my tale of an edgelord musician who fled the country because he feared that music composed by Satan himself had started a clock ticking down to his inevitable doom.

Alex Reagan: Hi Charlie! So I just wanted to touch base with you and see if you were ready to spill the beans on your father’s mysterious five-day disappearance, which just happened to coincide with your mother’s apparent murder?

Charlie Strand: Oh, he didn’t disappear. We just went out into the woods, sacrificed a bunch of animals, chanted prayers to the Dark God of Lost Souls, and asked his aide in finding my mother. You know, normal stuff.

Structural Acoustician Dr. Michael Pullman: Hey Alex, I did a retrograde deconstructional analysis of that sound file you sent me, and when you overlay it with the unsound you get a new structural waveform that I refer to as the Devil’s Harmonic, a resonance that vibrates at the exact frequency necessary to shatter the bonds preventing the shadow world from encroaching upon our reality!

Alex Reagan: So we probably shouldn’t have played it over our podcast like five minutes ago?

Structural Acoustician Dr. Michael Pullman: Absolutely not!

Alex Reagan: So this podcast that began as a semi-biography of a ghost hunting skeptic has evolved into a deep dive on the mathematical philosophy of music and how it can unleash the divine and/or demonic powers latent in the human mind. Bet you didn’t see that coming, did you? Join us next week, when we investigate a satanic cult masquerading as a wholesome brotherhood of monks, and I accuse Richard Strand of unspeakable deviations of morality and logic. Spoilers: the logic thing offends him more. I’m Alex Reagan, and we’ll be back in two weeks.