Dave Tompkins

Presents the history of the vocoder, from its invention by Bell Labs in 1928 as a speech-scrambling weapon to guard telephones from eavesdroppers during World War II through its use as a voice-altering tool in popular music.

The Vocoder from World War II to Hip-hop: the Machine Speaks

How to Wreck a Nice Beach

Greg Tate

Brian "B+" Cross

Ghostnotes: Music of the Unplayed is an extended photo essay with more than two hundred images that represent a mid-career retrospective of B+’s photography of hip-hop music and its influences. Taking its name from the unplayed sounds that exist between beats in a rhythm, the book creates a visual music, putting photos next to each other to evoke unseen images and create new histories. Like a DJ seamlessly overlapping and entangling disparate musics, Cross brings together LA Black Arts poetry and Jamaican dub, Brazilian samba and Ethiopian jazz, Cuban timba and Colombian cumbia. He links vendors of rare vinyl with iconic studio wizards, ranging from J Dilla and Brian Wilson to Leon Ware and George Clinton, David Axelrod to Shuggie Otis, Bill Withers to Ras Kass, Biggie Smalls to Timmy Thomas, DJ Shadow to Eugene McDaniels, and DJ Quik to Madlib. In this unique photographic mix tape, an extraordinary web of associations becomes apparent, revealing connections among people, cultures, and their creations.

Dave Tompkins

Books

Your next favorite book is out there