Reddit sleuths track down FEX, the band behind the internet’s most mysterious song

Members of Reddit’s r/ThatMysteriousSong community have finally identified what they call “The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet,” a new wave tune that a teenager recorded to cassette sometime around 1984, as reported yesterday by 404 Media.

The mysterious song’s digital trail goes back to 2004, when Darius S., the teenager who recorded it from a radio broadcast in Germany, posted it on a website along with other unknown songs, hoping others could help identify them. The search for its origins went viral back in 2019 when a Brazilian teen uploaded the song to YouTube. 

Now we know that the song is called “Subways Of the Mind” by a band named FEX. Here’s a recording provided by Michael Hädrich, a 68-year-old former band member.

Hädrich said in an interview with Munich publication TZ that the band had no idea the song had such a mythic status online. He still makes music under the name Silk Vision from a music studio in Munich and told the outlet that the band now plans to record a new version of the song and produce a video to go with it.

The big breakthrough came yesterday after members started sifting through bands listed in the archives of a Hamburg local music festival. One member called Marijn1412 posted that they’d identified the band after finding a clue in an old newspaper article mentioning FEX, a group described as having “Rock with Wave and Pop influences.” They contacted one of the members, who confirmed he’d played in FEX and sent over recordings — one of which was a version of “Subways of the Mind.” And in the ultimate payoff for the community, there were two others, titled “Heart in Danger” and “Talking Hands.”