While Cher, Britney, and Kid Rock have twiddled the Vocoder in their day, Kraftwerk was probably the first band to really remind us of the techno-hell we’re descending into by opened Autobahn with the ...

The vocoder—the musical instrument that gave Kraftwerk its robotic sound—began as an early telecommunications device and a top-secret military encoding machine. sort of alienated from your body. It ...

If you've listened to pop music in the past 40 years, you've probably heard more than a few songs with a robotic sound. That's thanks to the vocoder, a device invented by Bell Labs, the research ...

The vocoder—part military technology, part musical instrument—has had quite a history. In our new Object of Interest video, we explore the vocoder in settings ranging from the Second World War to ...

Here’s an unfamiliar scene from the front entrance of the Museum of Modern Art last Friday: a shady looking bald man was saying, “You got any extra tickets?” sounding more like he was trying to score ...

When I was in fifth grade, I knew what Kraftwerk sounded like without even hearing them — echoes of their electronic pulse were everywhere in 1982. Synth-pop acts the Human League, Soft Cell and ...

Dave Pehling is website managing editor for CBS Bay Area. He started his journalism career doing freelance writing about music in the late 1990s, eventually working as a web writer, editor and ...

The German musician, who died at 73, shaped sounds that provided templates for countless varieties of electronic dance music, rock and hip-hop. By Jon Pareles Machines making music. Repetitive, ...