Invented by Bell Labs in 1928 as a speech scrambler for the American military, the vocoder is a device with a pretty fascinating history. Dave Tompkins’ new book, How to Wreck a Nice Beach, charts this incredible journey from WWI, through the annals of musical history and to the present day of T-Pain dominance and Kanye West trying to make his flat fucking voice sound somewhat presentable. The New York Times is calling it a “hallucinatory stew of Rimbaud, Tom Wolfe, Lester Bangs, and Bootsy Collins” and that, my friends, is good enough for me. I’m buying it.

There’s more info on the book available over at the Melville House Publishing site.

Forget molesting dolphins in Goa or smoking blunts on white beaches in Jamaica, the sunny vistas of North Korea are where things are really cracking off. Vice Magazine have teamed up with Young Pioneer Tours to bring you the chance to win a holiday to everybody’s favourite socialist territory. The 10 day, all expenses paid trip will take you to a Pyongyang film studio, a shooting gallery and even North Korea’s only nightclub, where you’ll no doubt be skanking to Korean dub until dawn. Who knows, Lil’ Kim might even welcome you himself. He’s always wearing a Hawaiian shirt and brandishing a punch-filled pineapple on the news…or threatening nuclear armament, I forget which.

If you’re free from August 15th – 25th, all you have to do is convince Vice that you deserve the trip and voila, you’ll be living the dream in no time. Suggested entry forms include ‘essays, photo stories, comics, sculptures, movies, flash games, songs or bribes’, but I’m sure they’re open to whatever your little mind can come up with. Head over to Viceland now for more details on how to enter and a better explanation as to why you should be hyped about this unique experience.

See you there comrade!

I watched this last week but for some reason it didn’t occur to me to post it. Oh well, it’s here now and all I can really say about it is that it’s an exhibition of pure talent. Ed beatboxes the percussion, plays guitar, sings, raps and well, it sounds a little bit shit if I try and write it down, but it’s fucking amazing when you watch it. So good that Smokey Barz of YouTube grime fame posted it in amongst the street freestyles he gathers. That’s got to be good for a ginger kid with a guitar, right? Anyway, I’m tired, I’ve been as confused as an elephant in a black hole all week and it’s a miracle that you got anything out of me today. Just watch the video and behold the glory. The glory!

“My eyes are red, I’ve been burnin’!”

Shit. I spent most of last night charging about Sheffield with imperious intensity, scattering the fragments of my dignity and drinking for the sake of drinking. Still, somewhere in the haze I managed to catch Banksy’s Exit Through the Gift Shop, a curious and enjoyable documentary that explores the elusive phenomenon of street art and the equally fascinating life of French film-maker, Thierry Guetta. I’m not convinced that’s it’s entirely a work of reality and I think it would be naive to expect Banksy to deliver a straight forward piece of work. But, speculation aside, the film is a compelling and beautiful exposition of an important street movement and the intriguing characters behind it. If you’re down for some incognito, anti-establishment malarkey, then this is going to fit you like a fucking glove.

I promise my next post will be about music…

B-boying is generally accepted as one of the four elements of hip-hop (along with DJing, MCing and graffiti), and Benson Lee’s 2007 documentary Planet B-Boy, is a mad insight into one of dance’s least understood subcultures. Following several different b-boy crews as they attempt to win the prestigious Battle of the Year competition, human struggle meshes with awe-inspiring physical insanity to spawn a mesmerizing hour and a half of rhythmic viewing. At times, admittedly, it does stray into sentimental territory but I managed to dispel comparisons to the woeful world of X-Factor and spent God knows how long trying to lift myself off the ground with one arm and spin in a circle. It didn’t work and I think I’ve broken my neck. I’m writing this with my tongue. Please get help.

Stop! Trailer time.

Here’s a video of Emalkay being interviewed at “And Here it is, The Return of Fall Massive” in Baltimore a couple of weeks back. He chats a bit about how the UK and US dubstep scenes differ and mentions a few producers he’s currently hot for, it’s all very civil.

The best part, however, is the fact that he’s from Birmingham and doesn’t even mention the Bullring once. I swear to God I’m telling the truth…