In retrospect, Dolby was probably too smart for his own good, choosing the lure of a start-up over the starmaker machinery. The Flat Earth lived down to its name, and I lost interest soon after. Cloudburst at Shingle Street, like I said, sort of falls apart, but they can’t all be gems I suppose.īased on this album, I would have bet that Dolby was a major musical talent destined for great things, a bet I would have lost. One of Our Submarines is one of the best tracks on here, mixing cinematic scope with remarkable technical achievement and a beautiful melody to boot. Commercial Breakup is an irrepressibly catchy number with a surprising sense of funk. Windpower would have felt right at home on Mummer or The Big Express. Pretty much a perfect side of plastic from beginning to end.Įuropa and The Pirate Twins is a story set to music it reminds me of some of the storytelling that Kate Bush did on her albums, yet also reminds me of Ultravox in its romanticism. Weightless feels like one of Andy Partridge’s frothier confections.
#Thomas dolby radio silence movie#
Flying North, the opening cut on the original elpee version, is like a movie scored. When bands like Tull and XTC pay you the flattery of imitation, you know you’ve done something right. Speaking of influences, Airwaves had an audible influence on XTC’s Mummer.
Now I know: they thought it was the future of music, just like I did. For years, I tried to figure out why Jethro Tull made an album like that. Radio Silence is exactly the sort of thing that influenced Peter John-Vettese and Ian Anderson on Under Wraps. That’s not to say that Golden Age of Wireless isn’t original. Then again, I had “Yassassin” etched in my high school ring, so it could be a case of Bowie on the barainrain. It occurs to me now that “She Blinded Me With Science” shares more than a little in common with “Yassassin” by David Bowie. Or maybe I’m thinking of “Cloudburst at Shingle Street,” since that song does sound like it was just thrown together. Maybe I’m not remembering that right, since the music hardly feels like an afterthought. I thought I read somewhere that Dolby wrote the music for She Blinded Me With Science after he storyboarded the video. Dolby was giving us a glimpse into our own future a future which, ironically, would be absent of Dolby the musician. But the computers, synthesizers, drum machines and supporting voices told a rich story of a retro-future long before steampunk had gained steam. Dolby wasn’t a particularly good singer in fact, the label may not have applied to him at all. Both spoke to a bygone age in the future tongues of machines both reverent of the past and yet revolutionary.
Vienna by Ultravox had made a similar impression on me some years earlier. Listening to this record today, the technical sophistication behind it is still amazing. An international hit single, “She Blinded Me With Science,” changed Dolby’s fortunes, and the first album was remixed and resequenced to now feature the new hit single and the atmospheric “One of Our Submarines.” It was this version of the album that fell into my hands as a teenager, and I was immediately struck by its intelligence and romantic sense of adventure. The Golden Age of Wireless was recorded at around the same time as that session work and featured members of Lovich’s band (including the singer herself), but received a somewhat muted release on the little-known Venice In Peril label. Even before Human League and Duran Duran became household names, Dolby was building a reputation as a golden boy-an electronic wunderkind for artists as diverse as Joan Armatrading, Foreigner and Lene Lovich. Thomas Dolby’s first record was light years ahead of most synthesizer pop artists. Kronomyth 1.0: All wave computers and no playing makes Thomas a dolby. An early steampunk classic long before the idea had gained steam in the mainstream.
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