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MP3 download | Fast Matt "sns"

All children of the late 70’s/early 80’s (along with E.T. fans) reserve a special place in their hearts for the Speak & Spell learning appliance (even have-not kids like me). If you're now feeling a burning nostalgic sensation, visit this Speak & Spell simulator site to relive the halcyon days of your youth (minus the skinned knees), or download this poor-quality vintage commercial for Speak & Spell (wmv), starring then-ubiquitous super-dad Bill Cosby.

Inevitably, someone somewhere on the gravy train thought it would be clever to mix up the circuity guts of the S&S, rendering arty noise from the innocent spelling robot's voice; thenceforth the music world was forever changed. Listener Steve alerted me to Fast Matt, a prolific bender (geek name for circuit-shuffler), who sells his glitched-out S&S devices and offers some amazingly scatalogical MP3 audio from his creations.

You can visit this site for more souped-up S&Ss, or go here for some instruction on S&S deconstruction.

And, of course, WFMU has played many a song featuring the sounds of a manipulated Speak & Spell, so take a listen:

Kraftwerk  “Numbers” from an archive of Nickel and Dime Radio
Experimental Audio Research  “Track 2” as heard on Andrew Listfield's show
Komputergurl  “I Love My Speak and Spell” swiped from Pseu Braun's show
Christina Kubisch  “Speak and Spell (excerpt)” from an archive of Strength Through Failure with Fabio

Comments

[Allerian]

If you enjoyed the online Speak & Spell, you'll really like my friend's online Circuit Bent Speak & Spell at:

http://www.roilnoise.com/flash%20stuff.htm

[goemon]

There's also some S&S goodness on Hexstatic's contribution to the Ninja Tune "Solid Steel" series:
http://ninjatune.net/ninja/release.php?id=646