The mysterious case of the unknown MP3

Published on 10 July 2019 in , ,

Band performs on stage at restaurant or bar.
A band plays on. But what are they playing?

I was recently sorting out my MP3 folder on my hard drive. I’d been meaning to for a while, ever since some errant software called iTunes decided to reorganise all my folders without asking. Suddenly, instead of my compilation CDs all being filed together, it had split them apart under artist. This I did not like. But then I do not like iTunes.

But it revealed a mystery. For in my MP3 folder, I found a folder called Artist.

And inside that was a folder called Album.

Inside was another called was one called “Greg Wise & Saskia Reeves”.

And that led to another folder called Dracula. And that folder contained one file cryptically called called “4-01 Track 1.mp3”.

If you don’t know them (and sorry, but I didn’t), Greg Wise and Saskia Reeves are actors. And they lent their voices to an audiobook of Dracula. I found it on Discogs. But I don’t have an audiobook of Dracula, read by Greg and Saskia, or otherwise. And this file clearly wasn’t a chapter of Dracula being read by two actors.

No. The file was an instrumental piece of music.

It was a nice piece of music. I live it. It’s got a good beat. Some mouth organ. Strings. Brilliant. But what it was, I had no idea.

The first thing I thought was to search for it. I have Google Music Search on my phone. Surely Google would know the answer!

No results found.

On Twitter someone suggested Shazam. Of course! Shazam! I had forgotten Shazam existed! (Shazam’s eternal problem I am sure.)

I downloaded Shazam. And it gave me a match! I was excited. A match! Brilliant!

I played the matched file. It was completely different.

I tried again. Shazam gave me a different song, and it was still incorrect. A third and fourth attempt followed. Each failed to give a correct match.

I am completely puzzled by this music. It being instrumental doesn’t help in any way either, as there’s no vocal or lyrical clues to go on. There’s the mouth organ and that reminds me a bit of a track on The Go! Team’s album, Thunder Lightning Strike. The Go! Team have done a few instrumentals too, but I looking through my Go! Team collection found nothing similar. And also the strings didn’t seem quite right.

The Polyphonic Spree was suggested by my partner. But I only have one of their albums and I know this isn’t one of their tracks.

I was completely at a loss.

I even tried uploading it to YouTube. I did. Here it is.

I did so just in case YouTube’s recognition software picked it up as something it recognised. Given YouTube’s owned by Google and I had tried Google Music Search, I didn’t hold out much hope of a result. But I tried none the less.

No result.

The whole thing is a complete enigma.

So what is this music? I am at a loss. Maybe you know? Well you never know. If you do, please get in touch (it’s the contact form on my other website, Rambling Man, as I have never got round to setting one up for this site. But don’t worry, I’ll see it.)

Because if there’s one thing I’d like, it’s for this not to be a mystery forever.