We need more of this kind of thing…

FROM AUTHOR DAVE TOMPKINS:

BODE BREAKER
This bonus beach was engineered, with much patience, by Monk-One, winter 2010, while I sat in a fisherman’s beer chair in his basement. The mix is meant to accompany the book [Tompkins’ How to Wreck a Nice Beach: The Vocoder from World War II to Hip-Hop, The Machine Speaks]. Sometimes it ditches the book altogether. Sometimes it throws the book in the trunk and drives it to the middle of nowhere and burns magic hour donuts in a Piggly Wiggly parking lot.

All tracks contain some species of vocoder unless otherwise imagined. I apologize to summer, for the darkness, and the BB&Q Band, for running out of space.

STREAM: [audio:http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/How-To-Wreck-A-Nice-Mix.mp3%5D

DOWNLOAD: How To Wreck A Nice Mix” (mp3, 103mb)

Excessive track listing below.

(:01) On the Beach—Neil Young
Twenty years ago, I “fell asleep” on Figure 8 Island wearing a Public Enemy hat. It had been given to me by Terminator X. When I woke in the morning, I was wearing a G N’ R hat. Two crossed pistols, a skull, and roses. Whatever maniac did this: Please return my PE hat. No questions asked.

(:12) EMS Vocoder Test (1976)
I was told this is an impression of Grover talking about the pyramids.

(:31) The Bells of St. Mary’s Condition—Bell Labs (1936)
“The true loves who come from the sea…”

The Bell Labs referred to their vocoder tests as conditions. All Bell Labs conditions here were acquired from the Werner Meyer-Eppler archives at the Institut Phonetik at Bonn, not Bell Labs. W.M.E. referred to the vocoder as a retro-transformer, thirty years before a Decepticon showed up in a Trouble Funk song.

(1:16) The Unvoiced Hiss Energy Condition—Bell Labs (1936)
Pass the conch like they used to say.

(1:32) Change the Beat—Beside & Fab Five Freddy (1982)
“If we were any fresher you’d have to slap us.”
—Fresh Market billboard, Greenville, S.C.

(1:40) Pak Man (intro)—Jonzun Crew (1983)
A song about one man’s desire to exterminate all Pac Man machines with the help of a device invented to rewire the chromatic spectrum of the universe using 17 million colors, the Suboptic Shadow World, and Sun Ra.

Continue reading →