Information Society Peace and Love, Inc CD & Vinyl

There’s a genuinely great Easter egg hiding on Peace and Love, Inc. by Information Society.

The track is called:

“300 BPS N,8,1 (Terminal Mode or ASCII Download)”

Yes. Catchy.


What It Actually Is

It sounds like noise.

It isn’t.

It’s dial-up modem audio. Not even pretending to be music.

More importantly, it’s not really an audio track at all.
It’s a text file converted into sound.

So instead of listening to it… you’re supposed to decode it.


The Title Is Instructions

That long title isn’t there to look clever.

It tells you exactly how to read the file:

  • 300 bits per second
  • No parity
  • 8 data bits
  • 1 stop bit

In other words, the track literally explains itself.


How To Decode It (Without Owning a 90s Modem)

You don’t need to dig one out of a loft.

Use Minimodem.

Run this:

minimodem -a 300 --ascii

That sets it to listen at the exact settings from the track.

Press play. That’s it.


What You Get

A short, semi-fictional story about the band getting kidnapped in Brazil.

Not life-changing. But not the point.


Slightly Ridiculous Bonus Fact

The ending nearly didn’t make it.

The track was almost faded out during production, which would have chopped off part of the message.

Which would have been… annoying.


Why It’s Good

Because it’s completely unnecessary.

Nobody asked for a track that only works if you decode it with modem settings from the title.

They did it anyway.

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