thomas dolby

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by Jon Regen
says famed keyboardist and songwriter Thomas Dolby. The storied synthesist whose '80s hits like "She
Blinded Me with Science" and "Hlperactive!" defined the pop sound of a generation, has gone relativelv unplugged, eschewing racks of musical gear
for a compact recording rig in his back yard. "When I started out, synthesizers were the future. Thel- had sounds that few people had heard or even
imagined. Now because of the accessibility of technology to the mass market, that sense of pioneering is null. So iti no longer somewhere I want to
go. I dont want to be part of the throng. I always want to use an idiom thatt fresh to mel'
"Fresh' means releasing his first collection of new music in nearly two decades, with a series of three digital EPs that collectively form his
upcoming full-length album A Map of the Floating City. Two of them- Amerikana and Oceanea-are a'railable now and they find Dolby at the
peak of his sonic and story'telling powers. From the alt-country swagger of "Road to Reno" and 'The Toadlickers" to the nuevo bossa nova of
"Simone" and the fiddle- and Celtic guitar-laden "17 Hills," each track is a triumph of texture over technoiogy, with Dolby spinning timeless
"It's always been about the sorgsj'
tales of humor and heartbreak.
On the eve of his new EP's release, Dolby invited me aboard his British lifeboat studio, the Nutmeg of Consolntion,totalk sound and songwriting shop.
For an artist known for pioneering synth sounds, your newtracks sound
anything but tech-heavy. Some listeners might find this surprising.
Well, I need to be working in a context that's challenging, stimulating,
and fresh to me. I think that what's different after a break of 20 years or
so is that because ofthe availability ofall this new technology, there's
thousands of guys around the world who have access to the same stuff.
So it's less interesting to me now It's sort of like the difference between
Doctor Livingston exploring Africa, and going on a safari today where
there are Land Rovers left, right, and center. llaughs.l
The sounds you created years ago, for your own music and for bands like
Foreigner, had never been heard before. There were no presets. , .
That's
right-they werent
.
available, and your ear wasrit accustomed to
them, so that meant they jumped out. You can go back and listen to them
now and think, "For 1981, that was pretty cool!" But in this day and age,
we've become accustomed to hearing'tutting edge" sounds on records
and remixes on a daily basis. And, because now it's okay to make a record
with just a groove and one lick-which is perfectly fine and valid-weVe
become somewhat numbed to the impact of an original and different
sound. So, I dont want to push in that direction.
What I don't hear a lot of is classic songwriting, with lyrics and
melody, with chord sequences and arrangements. Some artists are allud-
ing to that, like Amy Winehouse doing a retro thing. So there's a certain yearning to get back to that simple authenticity that things appeared
to have in the past, but there are very few people that actually write
songs like that anrrnore. So that appeals to me, because I can do that,
I think. My motto for this album has been, "Only do what only you
can dol'
Why release three EPs on their own, with a different concept for each,
beforethe full albnm comes out?
Well, it didnt start out that way. The album is called A Map of the Floating City, and its been called that for about 15 years! I havent been working on it that long, but I knew 15 years ago that mynext album would be
called that. The rr-av I work is, I start with the mental image of an empfy
spotlight on a stage. And it's iike,
a
guywalks into the spotlight and starts
plaFng a song. What does it sound like? I work backwards from that
moment, rthen the audience hears it. I put myself in their seat and ash
"What would that guy have to sing to blow me away?"
How did you go from having a title to knowing how you would flesh
out the album?
I had a few songs, or l1'rical ideas that I would hum to myself in the shower,
or waiking on the beach, or driving in my car. But I didnt flesh them out,
really, until I was in a position to make a record. So when my tech business
involvement in Silicon Valley got to the point that I could step back from it
and make some music, I knew I had to get in front of an atdience and play
to get my chops back. So I focused on the old material and did the SoIe
Inhabitant solo tour and a live album and DVD as welI. [Dolby pioneered
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with the synth soundsj' he explains. "lt's really the
first thing that works, basically. ljust have no patience
for it. I don't want to spend my time messing with all
that stuff, just in order to keep up with the Jonesesl'
Housed lnthe Nutmeg's wheelhouse, the studio is
based on Avid Pro Tools LE, running on a Mac Gb
tower. An original Digidesign Mbox serves as Dolby's
front end interface. "l'm using Pro Tools 8, which I like
a loti' Dolby continues. "l Oo J tot ot my MlDl sequenc-
.:.?,--
--t,r,
ing in [Apple] Logic Studio, which is very powerful and
affordable. But Pro Tools really evolved out of imitating
i
an analog multitrack studio, so it's comfortable ani
makes sense for mel'
Other gear in Dolby's digital den includes a Nord
Lead 3, Casio, Access Virus Tl Polar synth, CME
UF series keyboard controllers, a pair of Millennia
I#ffiN$F'OWER
Thomas Dolby's backyard studio, the Nutmeg of Consolation,is
both retro and revolutionary. lt started life as a ship's lifeboat on the
British merchant vessel Queen Ann stationed in the South Seas.
Now, it's dry-docked behind Dolby's seaside home on Britain's north
coast. "l wasn't able to have the proverbial garden shed with a studio in it, like at my house in Californial' Dolby tells me, "so I came up
with the idea of having a boat here. Our properly used to house just
such a lifeboat when this was a fishing village. I spent months looking for an appropriate boat, and eventually found this one on eBayl'
On board, Dolby's studio is decidedly stripped down, especially considering his gear-heavy past. "l don't take a lot of care
interactiye web audio and
Beatnik and Headspace.
cell
phone ring tone technology with his cornpanies
-Ed.l
When I started working on the actual songs for the new album,
there were genres that I wanted to play with. I'm most excitable when
working in territory I'm not familiar with. So for example, "Simone"
has a sort of bossa nova, ]oao Gilberto groove to it. Now, I've never
played anlthing in that style-the closest would be "I Scare Myself"
from The Flat Earth. I never went through a period in my career where
I was playing standards and such, so I had absolutely zero familiarity
with that. But I heard it in my mind-I heard the melody, and I could
sense the chord voicings that needed to go behind it, but I had no idea
how to find them. In fact, every time I sat at the piano and tried to
work it out, Id end up in a different key and Id forget what key I started
in. Eventually, I booked a recording date in London with some great
Central and South American musicians, led by Colombian bassist Chucho Merchan. Knowing it was two weeks away and that I was under
the gun to learn the song, I ended up running a click-the first and
only time I've ever done that-and I sang a sort of 'boh, ah' melody
along with it, a capella. Then I played that track back and I worked out
the voicings.
It's almost like a Steely Dan tune in the sense that, just behind the
groove, there's a lot of harmonic shifting,
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Origin channel strips, and an AKG C414 microphone. "The CME is really my main keyboard for
piano and stuff when I'm playing livej' he says. "lf
need to lay down a piano part here, it tends to be
I
what I use because it's got the nicest keyboard on itl'
Noticeably and commendably absent from the Nutmeg is any
type of carbon-emitting energy. "lf you look up the ship's mast,
you'll see a wind turbine which generates 450 wattsj' he tells me.
"On the roof of the vessel are two solar panels, which provide
about 200 watts of additional power-although it's not very sunny
in Britain! Between the two of them, I can get enough power on
a windy and/or sunny day that I can continue working for several
hours at night. On a very windy and sunny day, I can work ten to
1 2 hours a night on batteries, which charge up from the turbine
and solar panelsJ'
lot of shifting going on. There are three verses, each in a
different key. It's like, "I dont know how we got here, but here we are!"
Yeah, there's a
Did you do a lot of the production work on these songs here in
your studio?
It was always my intention to do the bulk of the work right here on the
Nutmeg. But it's a bit cramped for a full band, so I went to a couple of
small studios in London to record the ground tracks. Then I came back
here with the Pro Tools sessions, and
Id use big building blocks, rather
than program a note at a time. Id take a whole verse that I liked, and
would cut and paste that whole verse with four instruments, and move
bits around and restructure songs. For all these tracks, the quickest part
was actually recording them. I spent 20 times that amount of time here,
messing around with them.
Your studio on theNutmegisanique because it runs on wind and solar
power. Has that always been a priority to you?
You want your footprint to be as small as possible. I like the fact that, for
consumer products. He left that
to the businessmen, while
he
explored ideas like a global wireless energy network, anti-grayity,
even radio messages from Venus.
He poo-pooed Einstein, and let
others like Marconi steal his ideas.
He cut up his schematics and sent
fragments to multiple governments, so no single one could use
his inventions to make weapons.
He was obsessed with the number three. Was he
a
nut
case?
Prob-
ably. More power to him, and to
Doctor Who and mad scientists
like them!
If
any of that has
rubbed off on me, it's because I'm
as much avictim oftechnologyas
a master. I'm its plalthing-the
sorcerer's apprentice.
How do you see that aesthetic in
juxtaposition to your current
creative imperative zof to be 'the
example, ifyou're on
a
laptop and you have
a
power outage, you can keep
working on battery power. I very much liked the idea of doing this on
renewable energy. My initial idea was to have a boat that sailed around
the world using renewable energy, and I'd make an album on the boat.
Occasionally, I could sail up the Hudson, or the Thames, or the Seine,
and do a concert from the deck Well, that would have taken a sPonsor,
and no sponsor was forthcoming. So I settled on this idea, hence the
name, the Nutmeg of Consolatior, which is actually the title of a Patrick
O'Brian novel about the British Navy in the 19th century, and a skipper
whose ship is wrecked in the Pacific, but he makes it home in a little Dutch
barque called the Nutmeg.
Maritime themes have played a recurring role in your lpics. What
does the sea do for you creatively?
The sea is a force that's greater than us. That's what makes it spiritual. It's
tt.n . rtill, and constantly in flux. We donl own it-we've never tamed it
the way we have the land. So being close the sea-or on it, even in it-is like
spirifual communion for me, as it is for sailors, surfers, and fishermen.
From my wheelhouse I watch the subtle changes in the sea. I study
the North Sea container ships, through antique binoculars or sometimes
my periscope, and I follow online almanacs to track their arrivals and
departures from a nearby port. During the course ofthis album I've also
a
witnessed the construction ofa 56-turbine wind farm offthis coast, and
all the weird vessels that come and go to service them. When I wrote
"Windpower" in 1980, it felt like science fiction. I had no idea it would
become reality in my lifetime.
From The Gold.en Age of Wireless cover art to your retro aviator look
on the Sole Inhabitant tovr, your visuals have always suggested this
wandering master of technology-sort of Nikola Tesla meets Doctor
Who. How much of the real you is in that character?
I'm not sure anyone ever masters technology. Even Tesla, a brilliant scientist who was way ahead of his time and who revolutionized domestic and
industrial electricity, never settled into the mundane. He had no time for
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synth guy"?
'Hi, I m Thomas, and I'm a recovering synth guy!" lLaughs.l Seriously,
there are several stereotl?es in rock n roll the guitar hero, the coifted pop
star, the bearded protest singer, and so on.
I sort of defined
a new stereo-
Qpe, because I was the bespectacled nerd who got funky after hours when
the lab was closed. Of course my "axd' was a s1'nth. ln the '80s, that became
an easy way to pigeonhole me. In a way, "She Blinded Me
the song and the video-was
a
with Sciencd'-
spoof of that image. But it was avery catchy
sound and look, so it distracted people from the fact that actually, my music
Not compared to the people I tend to get
was never all that syrth-heavy.
lumped in with, like Gary Numan, Kraftwerk, the Human League, and so
on. Not even compared to New Order or the Pet Shop Boys. The rest of
my music was something you could sit down at the piano and play like a
singer-songwriter, with progressions and melody and harmony. I'm not
putting down electronic music-far from it-but it wasnt a category I felt
I really belonged in, and of course I have only myself to blame for that! It
wouldve taken
a
lot of media effort and record company clout to supplant
that image with something closer to my heart that was equally strong. But
the label at the time (Capitol/EMl) was uncooperative. They'd say, "We
all really love 'screen Kissl Everybody in the building is humming it. So
wheret the next single?" What they meant was, where's "science Part2?"
Are there any artists right now who you think are elevating the sound
ofsynths above the stereotypical?
Will Gregory of Goldfrapp comes to mind. I admit I dont listen to much
music. I tend to find groove-based, post-modern music very stifling and
constrained. Again, itt all about the songs. The backing can be a Balkan
folk ensemble,
a
Brazilian percussion section, two acoustic guitars, or an
indie rock group-I like it
a1l
and hate it all
unless there's a soul to it that speaks to me.
At
rare moments, something has leapt out at me
sonically-William Orbit or Bjork, for exam-
ple-but its never been
because
ofthe sounds
in isolation. It's always because ofthe context.
I hope that doesnt make me sound like a snob.
The reality is, because I'm just not
fan, I make my own records to
a huge
music
fiIl the hole.
|udging by the loyalty and diversity ofyour
fans, your songs clearly fill a similar void for
a great many others.
I dont consider
myself a commercial or
mainstream artist, but I know now-thanks
in part to the Internet being a true feedback
loop between artist and fan-that the emotion I feel when I pick a particular chord
change or sound or lyric actually does convey to a group of real people out there, that
it makes them feel the way I feei. Knowing
that, I dont really perceive the difference
between 10,000 versus 10,000,000 listeners.
Life's too short to be losing sleep over the
numeral zerol
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Sreanea!
Embedded somewhere in the
music oI Oceanea is a secret
message in Morse code, The
first 20 Keyboard readers to
correctly decode this 16-character message and email it to
morse.code@thomasdolby,com
will receive an individually numbered CD of Oceanea, autographed by Thomas Dolby, This
CD is not commercially available, so it's sure to become a
collector's itemlYou can down'
load Oceanea in MP3 format for
$z.g g at thomasdolby.com.
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a2.2011