Lostwave August 2019

Lostwave August 2019 is a heavily distorted mysterious song. Although the original claim was that the distortions are a result of tape damage, many in the community claim that they were artificially made in a digital sound editing software such as Audacity.

History
On August 11, 2019, a reddit user named u/IntelligentBread5 posted a heavily distorted song to the r/lostwave subreddit. The name "Lostwave August 2019" comes from the time and subreddit the song was first posted at. His story was that several years before the post, he bought a box of cassette tapes at an unknown location while traveling abroad (in Europe most likely specifically Northern England) at a yard sale. He was excited about these tapes because they had his favorite artists (Nirvana, AC/DC, Michael Jackson). However, most of the tapes were in bad shape. He then found one cassette that looked sun-bleached and the only label he could make out said "4." He played it and was interested, but this tape was damaged as well. The first track of this tape is LWA19. The audio in this original post is actually mostly lost except for a 30-second snippet file called nah_nah_nah.mp3.

Not too long later, the OP came back with a second "remastered" digitalization of the tape by a friend who digitized the tape with better pitch management. This remaster is what we hear when we think of LWA19, as the original audio is mostly missing.

In September 2019 and March 2020, Youtuber cwschultz featured LWA19 in his installments of Mysterious Music, a show documenting searches for mysterious songs. Because of these videos, by the summer of 2020, interest in the song had taken off again.

Because of the renewed interest in the song, some have asked u/IntelligentBread5 for a photo of the cassette and a digitalization of the rest of the tape, which u/IntelligentBread5 claimed had other songs by the band, but were in worse quality than LWA19. He then said he would release the rest of the tape after he pays a friend to digitalize it for him. After this, he deleted his Reddit account.

After this, search efforts exploded. Unfortunately, efforts were hindered by a troll who claimed to be the returned u/IntelligentBread5. This troll released the "rest of the tape," the songs were church songs, which LWA19 band likely didn't play (recall the rest of the tape had other songs from the LWA19 band). They were also in different quality than LWA19 and the "low quality" in the church songs were easily spotted as fake. In one instance, the troll actually ate chips at the mic in an attempt to recreate the distortions in LWA19.

Authenticity of the Original Story
The fact that one troll tried to throw us off with fake tape damage made people rethink the story behind LWA19 itself. Many began to even question if the distortions are even a result of true tape damage or of digital audio manipulation. The suspicions were compounded by u/IntelligentBread5's mysterious and convenient disappearance: he had disappeared once people asked for evidence of there truly being a cassette 4 and other songs by the band. After some further investigation, it was determined that the distortions in the song are actually from a digital audio manipulation software, likely Audacity. The search channel in The Mysterious Song Discord server was then removed as it was seen by the mods as not worth their time. It is still thought that there is a true song (i.e. not made by u/IntelligentBread5 himself and its only online presence is from his Reddit posts) that could be found under the distortions. However, with most of the lyrics that could reveal the title distorted, there is little hope.

Methods to Find The Song
Despite the seemingly impossible task to find this song, The Lost Search Discord server continues to investigate the song. One method is to try and remaster the song enough to reveal as many lyrics as possible. This is currently being worked on by Discord user antonio113#0576. Despite his remaster efforts, interpretations of the lyrics by server users remain completely different, showing that it is near impossible to get any clear lyrics by straight up remastering.

Another project The Lost Search Discord server has taken on is recreating the song. Despite the hard to understand lyrics in LWA19, the song's structure and many of its instruments can be heard clearly at most times in the song. Syllables in the lyrics can also be heard by a good ear. This means that a good recreation of the song can be shared around instead of the distorted mess we have now. If there is someone out there that recognizes this song, they'd likely rather hear a cover version of it that is in HQ and not something so tough on the ears. A good recreation of the song will help it spread to an ear that may recognize it. As of February 2021, Youtuber DefyJoe, who has covered many other mysterious songs including Kenya Dance, is up for the challenge. The cover was completed on February 28, 2021 and is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ajpltzRb10.