I guess it’s pos­si­ble and totally ok to rec­om­mend this book even though I myself haven’t even read it yet. It’s about V-O-C-O-D-E-R-S ->

Dur­ing this sum­mer Stones Throw will release a col­lec­tion from the elec­tronic music pio­neer Bruce Haack named “Farad: The Elec­tronic Voice” (accord­ing to Ama­zon it should be out on 30th of August). Accord­ingly to the name of the album it will fea­ture tracks where Haack works with a vocoder. The record­ings are from 1970–1982. Instant buy when in sight!?

The co-founding mem­ber and bassist of Chic recorded one album under his own name. While the title track is not nearly as good as Your Love Is Good To Me, it still man­ages to amuse with vocoder and funky groove. Good track to start a set with. What it would need is more LINN DRUM! Track #2 of Kyny­Nasty Vol. 1.

Bernard Edwards — Glad To Be Here (320k)

I was going to post tracks by mys­te­ri­ous span­ish synth-pop group Vam Cyborg but Mutant Sounds did that (still avail­able) already a year ago.

Instead we have here pretty much sim­i­lar group called Vocoder, which is also from Spain. Italo-Disco from Spain? Yes, per­haps a lit­tle more towards electro/synth-pop. Not much more infor­ma­tion avail­able besides what is said in their myspace pro­file. They did cou­ple of songs and dis­ap­peared as did many other italo/electro acts in the 80s. (The songs in their myspace are avail­able for down­load if you log in! Tip.)
Re-press needed. Clone Clas­sic Cuts perhaps?

This video is fun. Ingen­u­ous and naive fun.

More Vocoder at Youtube:

directo en ZGZ (Vocoder live at Zaragoza, Spain) (youtube)
Hacker (youtube)
(maqueta La Radio)
Radiote­le­scope

Vocoder (myspace)

MP3
Vocoder — Amor de Robot (192 kbit MP3)
Vocoder — Min­danao (rapid­share) (192 kbit MP3)

edit: Some­one did this one too. Cou­ple of years ago. Noth­ing in teh inter­net is rare nowadays!

This week I dis­cov­ered (well, friend of mine found) a very nice track called ‘En Route A Vienna’ by Mal­tese pro­ducer ‘Ori­ent Express’. Not much infor­ma­tion about him though. Very excit­ing track indeed. I think it stands next to Alden Tyrell’s pro­duc­tions if not outdo! You can down­load short­ened ver­sion from Squadron Fes­ti­val — Down­load page.

One of my favorite pro­duc­ers at the moment ‘Calvin Har­ris’, has done cou­ple of excel­lent tracks lately. One of those tracks is pro­duced for ‘The Mitchell Broth­ers’ and it is called ‘Michael Jack­son’. Lis­ten to it on their myspace and watch the video here. More Calvin good­ness is avail­able on new release ‘BBC Radio 1 Estab­lished 1967′ which is a col­lec­tion of cov­ers espe­cially recorded for Radio 1. Calvin’s track is a cover of Jamiroquai’s ‘Still­ness In Time’. Vocoder­heaven! Hear it.

Inter­est­ing thing is that Calvin Har­ris has pro­duced two tracks for Kylie Minogue’s forth­com­ing album ‘X’. I’ve heard the other one already and it’s sur­pris­ingly good! Trade­mark synths by Calvin. Lovely!