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Martin Raymond's avatar

Can’t talk about vocoders without mentioning Stevie Wonder on Sesame Street and Flip Wilson. Also Kraftwerk “Trans-Europe Express” and EWF “Let’s Groove”.

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David Goessling's avatar

Great episode. Imogen Heap is a goddess.

Throwing a plug for my long-ago techno-art-pop band WKGB which was an early Vocoder experimenter.

WKGB was a NJ-based guitar/synth duo with Dennis Kelley that had a run in the Northeast in the late 70s. We had one single release, Non-Stop,/Ultramarine, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCHImYlAgtw which made various best of lists at the time.

No tapes, no MIDI, all analog live using primarily EMS Synthi gear and cheap early drum machines. Earliest recordings were with the great Jim Whittemore, later of the Scientific Americans.

Here's a link to our early demo tape from 1978 featuring Jim's three tunes, the first two utilizing a rare and tweaky EMS Vocoder.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzybfsZFkrI&t=1175s

A version of this tape was used as pre-show music by DEVO on their early tours. This led to our opening for DEVO in Central Park in 1980. Lots of unreleased material, some may come out soon from

Dave Goessling

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