Lostwave August 2019

ⓘ This lostwave is does not have any confirmation of existence.
Lostwave August 2019
Genre	Possibly Blues or Rock
Year	unknown
Status	Unsolved; Possible hoax
Original poster	IntelligentBread5
Search started	August, 2019

Lostwave August 2019 is an unsolved unknown song that is heavily debated and controversial within the community. The track was posted to the r/lostwave subreddit by IntelligentBread5 and was distorted by alleged tape rot to the point it was largely unintelligible.

There has been ongoing discussion in the community to whether the song is a hoax or not.

Original Post

On August 11th 2019, user IntelligentBread5 posted an almost indecipherable recording of a tape to the r/lostwave subreddit. The tape was so distorted that barely any words or phrases could be made out, leaving the community to title the track after the month it was uploaded.

IntelligentBread5 claimed:

"Help identify this song

Hello

Several years ago, at least 10 years I think, I bought some cassettes while abroad in Europe. I can't remember exactly where, as it was a coach/ferry trip in several countries. We went to a market/yard sale type place and I bought a box of cassettes because there were some good bands in there (nirvana, AC/DC, MJ) when I got home after about 1 or 2 weeks, I played them and was really p\*ssed to find most of them were really bad quality and damaged. Under the cassettes with actual labels, there were some with hand written labels like mixtapes and some with faded/sunbleached (?) labels. Most of these are either completely blank, unbearable quality or somewhat audible. This tape was labeled by hand cassette 4, written over a faded/sunbleached label that I can't make out. The first track on it is this song, and when I first heard it I was hooked, I really want to find out who made it so I can hear it more clearly. If anyone recognizes this, please let me know the band of origin. Legit, I signed up to reddit today just to post this, as i've tried quite a few forums that ended with nothing."

-IntelligentBread5

The audio snippet from this post has been lost aside from a very short MP3 clip.

Digital Remaster

IntelligentBread5 returned but this time to the r/lostmedia subreddit, where they posted that they had paid a friend to digitise and remaster the first track. This version of song became the audio most commonly associated with Lostwave August 2019.

The remastered version of the track was subsequently featured as a honorable mention in C.W. Schultz's September episode of Mysterious Music, which is evidence of the fact that some search had emerged around the song.

IntelligentBread5's Disappearance

Due to the interest in the track created by C.W. Schultz's mention of it, many people began to ask IntelligentBread5 for more information on the tape it was found on. Allegedly, IntelligentBread5 had also claimed to have other songs by the band on the same tape that just hadn't been digitised because they were in far lower quality than Lostwave August 2019. Reddit users were clamouring for photos of the tape or a full digitisation, the latter IntelligentBread5 claimed to be paying their friend to finish.

After being contacted about this by several reddit users however, IntelligentBread5 deleted their account sometime around June of 2020.

Hoax Discussion

IntelligentBread5's disappearance after being asked to provide authentication of their claims led to members of the community raising the possibility that the original track itself was a hoax.

Evidence To Support Lostwave August 2019 Being A Hoax:

• The distortions on the song provided by IntelligentBread5 sound nothing like distortions usually heard on a damaged tapes.
• Similar effects to the distortion heard on Lostwave August 2019 were recreated using audio manipulation software such audacity.

This was enough evidence to remove the channel for Lostwave August 2019 from the Most Mysterious Song disccord server.

Trolling

The search for Lostwave August 2019 has been marred by a significant amount of trolling and false claims of ownership of the song, with multiple people coming forward to provide a full upload of the tape or alleged undistorted version of the song.

References

• Lostwave August 2019