Thomas Dolby
"Enter the sonic laboratory of Thomas Dolby,
an arcane chamber where man and machine
create music that challenges the imagination.
Amid the dazzling array of appartus,
surrounded by gleaming keyboards
and banks of instruments, Dolby
stands alone, the bespectacled
young wizard of electrikery,
a near-sighted boy
wonder with
far-sighted
artistic
visions."
Born Thomas Morgan Robertson in Cairo in 1958, and dubbed Dolby by schoolmates, he honed his musical talents in Paris and London before founding the Camera Club and helping out Lene Lovich - then going solo (amongst a number of other diverse guises such as writing and producing one of the first million selling rap 12" singles and keyboard for a popular "soft metal" band).
"I adapted a lighting computer to trigger synths and drum pads around 1979. Then I got a Fairlight, and finally a Mac around 1985.I'm not a very proficient keyboard player, so the computer became my musical instrument."
Albums
- THE GOLDEN AGE OF WIRELESS - 1982 (#13 in US)
- THE FLAT EARTH - 1984 (#35 in US)
- ALIENS ATE MY BUICK - 1988 (#70 in US)
- ASTRONAUTS & HERETICS - 1992
- THE GATE TO THE MIND'S EYE - 1994
Between these albums Dolby is credited with many film and videogame soundtracks. He also relocated to San Francisco marrying a famous actress and setting up Headspace. Whist quietly mooting that an '80's revival is "amusing".
"For the last three years I've been running
a company called Headspace, which makes
technology and content for the internet.
We've been gradually ramping up.
The latest feather in our cap is
that Java has licensed our
technology to be the
audio engine in
their language."
LEXICON
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