I’ve had a few of these experiences lately where I’ve found a recording of something I have no recollection of actually doing. Usually it’s on minidisc, but I just found a tape of myself that I just can’t place. It sounds like me, that’s all I can say, but it also sounds like I am playing an electric guitar (or more accurately a semi-acoustic I think, but it’s definitely plugged into something), which is something I never do, and haven’t done except in bands in a purely textural way for about five years. But it’s definitely me. And I can hear my voice too, really quietly, and then some kind of horrible noise in the background that sounds like the tape fucking up, but as it goes on I realise that it’s actually a synthesiser or something, droning and then swelling and then dying down, something really primitive. But I don’t think it’s either of my synths. I know what they do, and this is not what they do, and I also know I haven’t played an electric guitar since around the time I got them. So what is this, when did I do it, and why? I have no idea. It sounds like a ghost. Maybe I was a ghost when I made it. I don’t sound very happy. Maybe I couldn’t sleep.

Maybe it’s the old ring modulator that broke, and I have somehow rigged it up to do something synth-like. Before I got the synths I was pragmatic like that.

What’s weirder is that it’s not a 4-track recording, so I guess I recorded it on the dictaphone that I am now listening to it on. But I’ve had a minidisc for years and years, and I don’t think it’s pre-minidisc. So what - when - why?

Then it stops and it’s a Beach Boys mix tape that - again - I don’t remember making. Which places it before I got a computer and therefore a CD burner. Which…fuck…I have no idea.