The first breakthrough in years came in May, when a user on the lively Reddit community r/TheMysteriousSong found a reference to the Hörfest, a competition for amateur bands that the radio station holds every year in Hamburg, Germany. “It was a very likely way to solve our puzzle,” says Arne, moderator of the subreddit who posts under the name LordElend (Arne declined to give his last name, citing privacy concerns), “since this was a good explanation as to to “Why a tape of an amateur band would have been broadcast on NDR, which normally had high standards.”
A search of local government archives turned up thousands of pages about Hörfest, but it wasn’t easy to sort through them. “We realized that 800 bands, most unknown and not on Google, will need a larger group of researchers,” says Arne.
Soon, hundreds of people on multiple platforms were collaborating on extensive spreadsheetslisting band members, sounds, songs and anything else they could find. One of these researchers, who posts using the handle marijn1412, discovered that a member of a gang on the spreadsheets, Phret, had joined a different gang called FEX. By contacting former FEX members, they confirmed the origin of the song. They waited to publicly announce the find until the band could sign off and provide a clearer recording of the song.
“Subways of Your Mind” is not the only missing media mystery that has been solved recently. In September, an image of a fabric pattern was traced to its origin. In June, another Lostwave song known as “Everybody knows that“was found after it had become a viral sound on TikTok. A song from a popular YouTube video may have helped you. identified in November 2023.
These searches tend to be much less specific and focused than the Hörfest data, but no less organized or collaborative, since whether or not they find the song, people find kindred spirits. “Lost media pursuits have shared community values,” Chapdelaine says, adding that they are “amplified by the dynamics of social media platforms. Platforms encourage engagement. “Lost media searches promote interactivity and participation.”
That’s why the story is not over, even if the so-called “lost wave final boss”has fallen. Since other search communities found what they were looking for, they have joined the larger lostwave and lost-media community. As Baskerville saw, it’s not really about the song, but about the search, the feeling of participating in a project that contributes to cultural heritage and, perhaps, finding some songs so unique that they haven’t been heard in decades.