How To Wreck A Nice Beach

The Vocoder from World War II to Hip-Hop

By:

Dave Tompkins

Format:

Paperback / softback

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Description

This is the fascinating and wonderfully quirky story of how a military device became the voice of hip hop and pop music. Though the vocoder - invented by Bell Labs in 1928 - was designed to guard phones from eavesdroppers, it is now widely used as a voice-altering tool for musicians. How To Wreck A Nice Beach is born from a mis-hearing of the vocoder-rendered phrase 'how to recognise speech.' Music journalist Dave Tompkins traces the history of electronic voices from Nazi research labs to Stalin's gulags, from the 1939 World's Fair to Hiroshima, from nightclubs to Muppets.

Author Biography:

Dave Tompkins, a former columnist for The Wire, writes frequently on about hip-hop and popular music. His work has appeared in Vibe, The Village Voice, Wax Poetics, and The Believer. Nearly a decade in the making, this is his first book. From the Hardcover edition.

Release date Australia

November 8th, 2011

Author

Dave Tompkins

Audience

General (US: Trade)

Pages

352

Dimensions

178x216x24

ISBN-13

9781612190921

Product ID

10841789

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How To Wreck A Nice Beach

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