Sauerbraten (sour roast) is a very old German recipe traditionally made with horsemeat and vinegar. When the dish was served in the ceremonial shape of a ring, primitive Germanic tribes believed that they could communicate with spirits, gods, and other “sky beings” through the hole in the center of the meat. Inspired by ancient texts and recipes, a pair of engineers from San Luis Obispo, California, conducted experiments in the early 1990s using a Sauerbraten Beef Ring that they claim was capable of capturing and transmitting radio signals from deep space. They released their findings as two 45-minute “songs,” each filling a side of a 90-minute cassette tape. The tape, labeled “Hibernating Rockets” on one side and “A Spaceship Being Swallowed By A Black Hole” on the other, is either lost or in a private collection, but the legend surrounding this recording is that it contains the elusive “brown sound” and could induce nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea in anyone who heard it.
The transmission here was engineered by SBR’s Sauertronica Division at an undisclosed Southern California location. It was produced by Acid Invader and White P.E. Leather.
Sauerbraten Beef Ring contributed to the Opendoor Edition of Waywords and Meansigns in 2017, recording “Nought A Wired From The Wordless Either”, page 223 line 12 through page 224 line 7.