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Boss-battle game 'Furi' gets a soundtrack full of electro artists
You might not know much about The Game Bakers' upcoming one-on-one action game Furi, but you're about to hear a lot more about it in a very literal sense. The studio has revealed that its boss-battles-only title will have a soundtrack created by a slew of known electro artists, including Carpenter Brut, Danger and The Toxic Avenger. The Game Bakers are confident enough in it that they're both selling the soundtrack (€15/$17 for digital, €30/$34 vinyl) and holding a concert in Paris on July 8th.
Book review: How To Wreck A Nice Beach: The Vocoder from World War II to Hip-Hop
How To Wreck A Nice Beach: The Vocoder from World War II to Hip-Hop by Dave Tompkins (Stop Smiling Books; $35) World War II increased the rate of human innovation to a pace unseen in any other period of history. New technology from the era includes everything from synthetic rubber to the atomic bomb to magnetic audio tape, which the Germans successfully kept secret until the war's end. After the Nazis fell, Lt. Jack Mullin of the US Army Signal Corps shot footage outside of Hitler's home, grabbed one of the Fuhrer's piano strings for a souvenir, and brought two AEG Magnetophons (along with fifty reels of Farben recording tape) back with him to the states. He then sold a recorder to Bing Crosby, revolutionizing broadcasting and music-making in the process. Another device that made its debut in World War II only to be later adopted by the entertainment industry is the Vocoder. Speech synthesis was the brainchild of a Bell Labs employee named Homer Dudley. Dudley surmised that human speech consisted of two things: the carrier (the noise that your vocal cords makes) and the formant (the sound formed from the carrier by your mouth, throat, and sinuses). Dudley went on to develop something called the Voder (Voice Operator DEmonstratoR), which used a carrier tone generated by a radio valve and a formant created by hissing air to create artificial speech. Hear a demonstration (and learn about how the Vocoder was used to defeat the Axis powers) after the break.
Electro's 2-CD iPod stereo costs way too much
We're beginning to wonder if the madness will ever end, but considering just how enjoyable it is to sit around and poke fun at the zany attempts to crank out "unique" iPod stereo systems, we suppose we won't mount any kind of offensive to stop guys like Electro from trying. The 2-CD iPod docking station has "subpar" and "lame" written all over it, but at least it does include one of the most interesting two-disc CD changers we've ever seen. As you can probably tell, it holds a pair of discs at once, your iPod in the middle and a speaker on each side -- all controlled by a minuscule remote. Granted, it does boast an equalizer (with just four presets, mind you), an AM / FM radio and a clock, but all that definitely does not add up to $199 worth of (non-name brand) gear.[Via SlashGear]
