the lost tapes
…
The Lost Tapes of San Lambardanzo are, as far as we know, the only surviving record of a tiny Pacific island that once sat somewhere between Hawaii and California. They are the only de-classified artifacts of the era from 1942, when the island was ‘discovered’ by a downed B-29 crew, to its mysterious and violent destruction in 1997.
For centuries, San Lambardanzo was simply a small volcanic island where the natives lived amongst lush rainforests and volcanic cliffs. The location of the island was not particularly remote by Pacific standards, but a combination of prevailing weather patterns and a curious phenomenon (owing to the mineral content of the island itself) prevented it from appearing to the naked eye unless you were right on top of it. Thus it remained undisturbed by the modern world, until the second great war.
February 1942
One evening, by fateful chance, a B-29 experiencing catastrophic engine failure was in just the right spot. The crew assumed they were ditching their stricken aircraft in the ocean until their altitude had dwindled to just a few hundred feet. Suddenly the clouds parted and they were astonished to see a lush canopy of forest just beneath them, as the cliffs of the island’s interior mountains whizzed by above.
The plane landed hard and broke apart, but it was empty of fuel and ordinance and the crew survived with minor injuries. After spending the night under a grove of palm trees, they awoke to find themselves surrounded by the native Lambardanzans. (The tribe’s name for itself is unpronounceable in the English language.) A peaceful people, the natives attended to the immediate wounds of the crew, took them back to their village, and more or less adopted them as their own.
After a week the crew had recovered and desired greatly to be rescued. Their radios broadcast nothing but static.
After a second week, they had gained the ability for crude communication with the locals. While none of the Americans were by any means skilled in linguistics, they found themselves taking to the Lambardanzan language quickly, as their counterparts did the same with English.
By the third week, they were discussing with the village elders the concepts of war, allegiance and global travel in both languages. While the Lambardanzans had trouble with the idea of why the United States and Japan were at war, they understood the meaning of conflict and the necessity for the crew to return to their unit (and eventually their families) as soon as possible. They outfitted the men with handmade catamaran canoes and as many provisions as they could hold. They told the crew when and where to paddle, and when to wait for specific weather.
After 6 weeks, the B-29 crew was back in California.
August 1945 – May 1970
A few years after the airmen reached California in their Lambardanzan catamarans, the American military (with no small effort) managed to return to San Lambardanzo under the guise of ‘rewarding’ the natives for their assistance recovering the airmen. The officers and scientists who met the village elders were shocked to discover the Lambardanzans spoke functional and effective English, though years had passed since their interactions with Americans.
They also learned that a Japanese submarine crew had washed ashore about 6 months after the plane crash. The village chief switched to speaking Japanese when he told the story of the sub’s arrival. At that moment, in the eyes of the United States Navy, the operation immediately shifted from goodwill to occupation.
The initial American presence was in the form of strategic reconnaissance, but very quickly took on a more scientific purpose once the strange properties of the surrounding geological formations were discovered.
Three months after the Americans returned to San Lambardanzo, every one of the natives spoke perfect (if California-inflected) English.
The island remained a secret research outpost until 1968, when a classified panel of the Joint Chiefs decided to construct a military base there. By late spring 1970, the place was more or less finished.
June 1970 - May 1997 (The Tapes)
San Lambardanzo was now home to a state-of-the-art air and naval support facility. A miniature town adjoined the base, complete with a tiny high school. The soldiers, scientists and their families enjoyed their own Pacific paradise. The natives preserved their village in the highlands, but many lived day to day in the town. They spoke English, dressed in American clothes, and were indistinguishable from the Americans except for their olive skin and almond shaped eyes. Sailors, pilots and guards shared back yard BBQs with chemists and physicists. Native Lambardanzans mingled freely amongst everyone. It was a near perfect idyllic setting with one open secret.
Travel between the mainland and the island was prohibited. Once you landed on San Lambardanzo with your family, you did not leave.
This was partially due to the difficulty in navigating the area. Instrument flying was notoriously inaccurate. The origins of the island’s strange properties remain a state secret, but it is generally accepted that the forced isolation of the inhabitants was due to the unexplained effects of the native environment. The population of the island was part of the experiment.
The people of San Lambardanzo were physically isolated from the American mainland, but they were able to import many of the comforts of home, including music, recorded telecasts, and film reels. As time passed, however, they began to feel their own identity diverging from the mainstream American public. They experienced a natural desire to express themselves and see their own lives reflected in popular culture. Thus, the tiny San Lambardanzan film industry was born.
The island possessed vast amounts of monitoring equipment, and since the construction of the permanent base, many of the resources from the previous 25 years had been replaced and sat unused. A group of civilians took it upon themselves to refurbish the equipment and by 1972 they were producing films, complete with musical scores, for the consumption of all San Lambardanzans.
They were remarkably productive, making dozens of films and television programs for broadcast exclusively on the island. Officially, not one of these reels made their way back to the American mainland. They were all presumably destroyed in 1997 along with the entire island.
However, one tiny detail required the cooperation of the homeland.
The Lambardanzan film industry never constructed a mastering studio for the scores they produced. The audio tapes were shipped, via the military, to a small town in Tennessee. Once mastered, the tapes were returned to the island and (presumably) synched up to the films.
February 2018
One cold winter morning at Misfit Pet Studios in Haunted Forest, Tennessee, the studio manager ordered a young intern down to the basement vault to look for some bluegrass tapes. While digging through mountains of dusty cartons, she stumbled upon a box with a US Air Force insignia. It was labelled "ISLAND TAPES - can you believe this shit?”
That box contained the audio tapes of all the scores to the San Lambardanzan films. Since the island no longer exists, they couldn’t be returned.
We at Misfit Pet Music have decided to release them, one at a time. The quality is dubious in places and the contents of the tapes are… curious.
We have not contacted the United States government, as the tapes don’t appear to contain any sensitive information. We see this as a fitting tribute to the long-lost film makers. The tapes will not provide any useful information about the secret island. They feature nothing more than the music produced and recorded by the cast away American, Japanese and Lambardanzan musicians, with the help of the local high school marching band, the San Lambardanzo Fighting Avocados.
The first release is the score to a 1986 horror film entitled Doom Of The Damned.