What IS this?

August 2, 2006 8:33 PM

What is this "song," and where can I get more stuff like it?

It's a misnamed, corrupt file from a previous hard drive, and I don't know what it is, or where it's from. But I want more!

posted by duende to Media & Arts (26 answers total)

Here be Trojans
posted by b33j at 8:46 PM on August 2, 2006

Any random file on your hard drive becomes playable once you add an MP3 extension. (Because it's a stream-able format without headers/footers.) It usually sounds like that.
posted by smackfu at 8:53 PM on August 2, 2006

Straigh outta foobar:

Decoding failure at 0:37.054 (Unsupported format or corrupted file):"C:\Since_U_Been_Gone.mp3"

Isn't it just a corrupt file?

b33j - where be trojans? scans show nothin for me
posted by chrissyboy at 8:56 PM on August 2, 2006

You are looking for recordings of robots projectile vomiting klaxons?
posted by woj at 8:57 PM on August 2, 2006

If you want similar stuff, check out Merzbow.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 9:01 PM on August 2, 2006

I am only an end user but for the first time ever I got this Virus scan alert (detected as generic downloader b - aboxinst_int16[1].exe) and i was only here, there^ and lifehacker.

I am quite happy to be wrong about this but I'm not going back to see if i can do it again.
posted by b33j at 9:02 PM on August 2, 2006

Response by poster: Yeah, woj, basically. And I sure hope not, b33j.
posted by duende at 9:13 PM on August 2, 2006

I wonder if this started as a Since_U_Been_Gone.mp3.exe virus that got renamed to mp3 and hence both presents Merzbow-like music and virus warnings.

Anyway, so far I don't think anyone has written a virus that works through an MP3 file (it would have to exploit a hypothetical weakness in a specific player), so I wouldn't worry much about it.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 9:23 PM on August 2, 2006

I didn't download the MP3, it was while I was on the page looking for it (if that helps).
posted by b33j at 9:25 PM on August 2, 2006

The Unix file(1) utility detects the file type as "8086 relocatable (Microsoft)". So it at least appears to contain executable machine code.
posted by mbrubeck at 9:27 PM on August 2, 2006

Lol. This is awesome. By the way, I am using Linux, and most of my media players refused to play it (so it does look corrupt). However the mimetype is somewhat correctly determined as audio/mpeg (kind of surprised here) and I can open it up in Audacity for playback. But I cannot see any tags or media information. It's awesome.
posted by a007r at 9:28 PM on August 2, 2006

Cool. Maybe something like if Lightning Bolt had a meth-fueled ménage à trois with Woody Phillips and Fantômas?
posted by woj at 9:34 PM on August 2, 2006

Response by poster: Merzbow's stuff is kind of... staticy. Painful. I want more helicopter/lawnmower music. I classified it as dot-matrix/bandsaw/chainsaw/xerox music, and can't even figure out what it would be called.
posted by duende at 9:36 PM on August 2, 2006

b33j, I got exactly the same alert when I went to yousendit.com for another file this week. The Norton AntiVirus alert said they couldn't repair or remove it, but a full virus scan didn't find anything. I also got a popup asking me if I wanted to install some probable spyware, and another popup advertising wallpapers. This was on IE, Windows XP. However, when I use Firefox with NoScript, I can go to that site with no problems.

So even though repeated Norton and SpySweeper scans have tunred up nothing from these yousendit visits, I ain't going anywhere near that site again using IE.
posted by maudlin at 9:36 PM on August 2, 2006

smackfu: you're absolutely incorrect!

There's a header at the front of each mp3 frame with a sync word and some other data. The player has to look through the data and only play what looks like real frames with sane headers.

Testing this theory, I renamed a 14 megabyte binary file .mp3 and played it. Foobar2000 was unable to find any frames at all, and made no sound (unlike Since U Been Gone.mp3)

If this is from a corrupt hard drive probably what happened is you're getting some clusters from a file that was valid (having a significant amount of decodable mp3 data by chance is unlikely)

QuickTime & WMP both fail to play it completely. Winamp gets further than foobar2000.
posted by aubilenon at 9:53 PM on August 2, 2006

Thanks maudlin, i don't feel quite so paranoid now (and yes, IE, Windows XP).
posted by b33j at 9:54 PM on August 2, 2006

smackfu: you're absolutely incorrect!

Admitted... but I'm surprised since you do occasionally get complete garbage MP3s, that just play a bunch of static. Is it a valid header, and then junk?
posted by smackfu at 10:08 PM on August 2, 2006

Best answer: Does anybody else hear somebody say "Jet Bike!" at 13:17, right before Winamp cuts it off? (There's another voice in the background just before "Jet Bike," too.)
posted by Skwirl at 11:32 PM on August 2, 2006

Best answer: Skwirl: yeah I did hear that

Oh! I bet I know what's going on here.

I bet this is a bunch of random blocks from an AVI or something that got put under this filename when your disk died. Robust mp3 players sort through the file and get the blocks they know how to deal with and throw out the rest. Quicktime and WMP just bail right away realizing that something's wrong.

Duende, did you have any jetbike videos that might have sounded like this?
posted by aubilenon at 11:36 PM on August 2, 2006

Response by poster: Skwirl and Aubilenon nailed it. This jetbike video was in the corrupted folder, and so the "song"'s components got mashed out of that in a very obvious way. I'm sort of sad that it's not actual music, although I totally dig that Woody Phillips. Thanks!
posted by duende at 12:25 AM on August 3, 2006

I don't have speakers or headphones at work, but damn sure I'll be downloading this mp3 when I'm home.
If you fancy making any more "remixes" duende, I'd be interested :]
posted by NinjaTadpole at 3:09 AM on August 3, 2006

I would suggest also:

Wolf Eyes

Old Man Gloom (about half the songs are what you're describing, I think, the other half are doom metal).

Black Dice
posted by The Michael The at 6:33 AM on August 3, 2006

Metal Machine Music?
posted by AJaffe at 6:39 AM on August 3, 2006

I recommend Treewave.They make music from actual dot matrix printers (and other things).
posted by jdfan at 7:00 AM on August 3, 2006

Man, the file's dead and I wanna hear it!
posted by klangklangston at 1:57 PM on August 3, 2006

Response by poster: Reposted. And it appears ACID 4.0 isn't hardy enough to open/render the file, so I'll have to find some other way of extracting the snippet.
posted by duende at 6:26 PM on August 3, 2006