How to Wreck a Nice Beach

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.