Solid Block of Ise

Back around 1996 I got my very first exposure to the phenomenon called MP3. This was far before filesharing and P2P-networks, back then MP3’s were traded directly with friends and hoarded like gold. Very few actual files circulated, and whenever something fresh appeared it was furiously distributed among my friends.

Since computing power and storage space back then was much more limited the hoarded collections were of limited size. A collection consisting of maybe 30-40 files was considered absolutely gigantic, and having a computer that could play back a song without stuttering was considered quite powerful. The software players back then were a far cry from the limousine software of today. Back then the only available player was the Frauenhofer original, and it sucked quite badly.

None the less we were blown away by the possibilities of the format. A CD-quality song contained in less than five megabytes? It was unheard of! So, the few MP3’s that existed were preciously stored and enjoyed.

Of course this was complete anarchy. No one knew where most of the files originated, and in many cases we were quite dubious as to the correctness of song titles and artists that were attributed to the music contained in the file. But we were young and didn’t really care much about such pettiness. Like conspirators around a candle we talked of the legendary process of CREATING an MP3 file.

(After a while we learned how to make our own digital copies. Back then the encoding process took roughly 20 minutes per file, so it was a tedious process. This was also at the now relatively low bitrate of 128 kbps. Compare this with my current rig, which is of 2003-vintage yet encodes a 256 kbits MP3 in less than 30 seconds. Quite a difference.)

Now you have the rough backstory to my detective-work.

One of the songs that I listened a lot to back then was an intriguing techno-song that was attributed to Moby. The name of the song in question was supposedly “Hymn”. It sounded kind of like what Moby did back in the mid-90’s so no one was too skeptical about it. That is until a few days ago when I got a hankering for that exact song. I guess some part of me needed a trip down memory lane, and that song was the key to it all. So I set about trying to track the song down.

I quickly discovered that even though Moby did make a song called Hymn, it sounded nothing like the song I remembered. Thus I needed to figure out the real identity of the song.

The first thing I tried searching for was a memory of a sample being played in the intro of the song. Basically a female vaguely computer-sounding voice saying “We create a mental atmosphere”. I tried googling for this, but the only thing I learned was that it’s a very common sample appearing in at least a dozen different songs. I needed something that would narrow the search a bit.

After some hard concentrating I managed to remember a fraction of the lyrics. Something about the power and the glory, until my kingdom come. After several searches I discovered that there in fact was a song named Hymn, performed by a woman named Tina Cousins. After having listened to that song I was certain that I was barking up precisely the right tree. It didn’t fit quite right though, since Tina Cousins song was released in 2004.

Now that I had the title of the song everything else was a lot easier. Some brief googling and Wikipedia confirmed that Tina Cousins song was a cover. It was a cover of an old Ultravox song from the early 80’s. Again, that song was very close to what I heard inside my head, but it still wasn’t the right version. Wikipedia provided me with a list of people who had done covers of that song, one of which was Tina Cousins, and another artist on the list seemed very likely:

A cover produced by a german eletronic music-project called Music Instructor. They’d made a cover-version in 1995, and this fit nicely into the general timeframe. After listening to less than two seconds of Music Instructors version I knew I’d hit paydirt. This was the song I’d heard so many years ago.

Now I can close the case on this song. Music Instructor, Hymn. Original by Ultravox. Tina Cousins-cover in 2004.

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