My friend contacted me asking if I could record a vinyl record in and 'make digital now please' for his mum. I don't always exclude favours for those of a parental nature (only try to dodge the never ending house maintenance tasks my own mother saves up for me), so I said I'd do it. When I got my hands on the record it was in fact a tiny piece of actual history... A one-off personal voice recording sent home from the front lines of WW2.

I put the record on, and discovered it was poorly recorded at 78rpm, which very few turntables have as it went out of fashion so long ago that it's become redundant. I thought, no problem, I'll play it in at 45rpm and then time stretch it, complete with pitch adjustment, to make it about 57% of its original length and that should compensate for the difference in speed. This did not produce good results at all, in fact it was unaudioifiable... I had created something of a constant tone punctuated with all sorts of pops and scratches.

I thought, what with my international superstar DJ career, that I would have to go full manual on this thing and rotate the platter by hand at a constant speed close to 78rpm. I did manage to pull this off, of sorts, thanks to my 'mad skillz'. The recording is listenable below.