This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights. The project presents the sounds of 270 UNESCO World Heritage sites and items of intangible heritage – all reimagined by artists from around the world to create a brand new way of experiencing these spaces. Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage **The Message** is built upon a popular urban legend which has circulated for years about what was recorded when Russian scientists drilled a nine mile hole into the ground in Siberia, lowered microphones into it and recorded what they heard. This legend is known as the Siberian Hell Sounds or Well to Hell.
Art Bell, an American broadcaster who hosted a show called Coast to Coast AM about the paranormal and other phenomena during the 1980’s to the early 2000’s, popularised this myth by replaying a tape many times on his show. This tape was the alleged recording captured by the Russian scientists - a cacophony of wild human-like screams. The recording is now in the public domain via the Internet Archive. In the late 90’s, a friend of mine in the United States, knowing that I was a collector of aural oddities, sent me a cassette tape he recorded of one of Art Bell’s radio shows in which Bell introduces the so-called Siberian Hell Sounds recording to a talk back caller to the radio station. In approaching **The Message**, I listened closely to the selected field recording of the Am Markt Hole of Bremen and researched available information about the history and background of this heritage site. The Am Markt Hole of Bremen, is marked by a manhole cover outside the Bremen Parliament in the market square. When a coin is dropped into it, various animal noises (The Bremen Town Musicians based on a fairytale by the Brothers Grimm) are triggered and played back with the sound of the animals rising up out the hole. It sounds as though the animals; a cat, a dog, a rooster and a goat are trapped deep in the ground, distressed and trying to get out. Thinking about this site, a hole in the ground and the character of the animal sounds within the original field recording, the legend of the Siberian Hell Sounds came to mind. Apart from the sounds of the animals, two other sounds from the field recording attracted my attention and were used in **The Message**; the metallic, machine-like sound of a coin dropping into the manhole slot and a short, excited yet eerie scream or whistle from what sounds like a child or bird in the surrounding market square. What you hear in the original Siberian Hell Sounds recording are only the human-like screams. There is no other aural context, before or after to the alleged sound recording provided. I wanted to extend this urban legend into a sonic narrative by imagining and providing some context around it. In **The Message**, the listener eavesdrops on an expedition of Russian-speaking men, talking and walking through the snow to the site of the hole. They start up heavy machinery to continue the digging, break through the rock and then lower a microphone down into the hole. When the microphone reaches its length, it picks up the sounds of horror, in this case the animals of the Am Markt Hole of Bremen and other voices buried deep below. I incorporated a number of royalty-free sound samples to flesh out the sound narrative such as the sound of walking through snow, Russian voices, wind, heavy machinery, falling rocks, etc.
To provide an extra twist, I imagined this recording being left on someone’s answering machine to pick up later, anticipating their horror at what they had just listened to coming from the machine’s speaker. HEADPHONES RECOMMENDED Kenneth Lyons
March 2025
