Review of Thomas Dolby: The Sole Inhabitant

Introduction

Thomas Dolby Robertson has been around for a while and also not. Although he worked with Foreigner on Foreigner 4 and later Def Leppard`s Pyromania, Dolby first really came to prominence as part of Lene Lovich`s band, writing the single New Toy for her which although was only a minor hit (number 53 in 1981), did secure her a performance on Top Of The Pops. This success prompted Dolby to pursue his own solo career, which resulted in the sublime debut album The Golden Age Of Wireless.


A masterpiece of synthpop that was had an epic cinematic feel to it, although subsequent re-issues and refreshed track listings have dampened that a little. Personally this is one of my favourite albums and by coincidence contains one of my favourite tracks in Europa And The Pirate Twins.

The artwork and video imagery of Dolby at the time made him look like the mad professor of synthpop, a quirky image that eventually worked against him when he decided it would be a good idea to sample Magnus Pyke on She Blinded Me With Science. Whilst this actually was a good idea, Dolby was then pigeon holed as the quirky eccentric musician and this was reinforced by the downright scary video for Hyperactive.

Starting with second album, The Flat Earth, Dolby slowly disappeared from the mainstream, relocating to California and swapping the music biz for real biz. After playing with a tech start-up called Headspace, Dolby hit success when the company was renamed Beatnik and fell into the ring tone arena for mobile phones. Beatnik`s software is used, according to Dolby himself, in about two thirds of the mobile phones used in the world today. That`s quite impressive really. Of course, his work as a full time businessman is done now so his attention turned back to music.


In my opinion, despite a couple of outstanding tracks here and there, nothing in his back catalogue surpasses the synth of The Golden Age Of Wireless so it`s a nice treat to see him reworking not only some of those tracks but later funk-driven tracks using a one-man synth rig that reminds me a lot of Howard Jones` that was showcased in his 20th Anniversary DVD last year. This DVD is, to paraphrase the man himself, a recollection of what came before and what follows is a continuation of the journey. A new album is expected soon-ish, hopefully as full of synths as this set.

Tracklisting:

Leipzig
One Of Our Submarines
I Live In A Suitcase
Flying North
The Flat Earth
Budapest By Blimp
Windpower
Europa And The Pirate Twins
Hyperactive
She Blinded Me With Science
Airhead

Video

You`re kind of stuck when it`s just one bloke on a stage fiddling with some knobs, but Johnny DeKam has put together a decent visual presentation for this. There`s a couple of big cameras capturing the action, then there`s the head cam that Dolby has attached to his noggin and finally the now obligatory visual screen. There`s a nice mix of shots from all of them and some good visual effects as well.

Audio

The soundtrack is PCM rather than Dolby but it sounds good, some minor use for the surrounds. There are a couple of sound glitches, mainly in the extras, these are only a little annoying rather than a huge problem though…

Features

Songs without intros - could have been a good extra but doesn`t work due to either sloppy editing or bad dvd design.

Studio Interview - Very detailed interview with Dolby that lasts for 30 minutes

Voyage Around The Rig - good 20 minute segment with Dolby on stage talking about his setup and how he uses it. Definitely one for tech-heads and geeks to salivate over, but quite interesting for the rest of us nonetheless…

Building A Song - a 3 minute sequence that shows Dolby adding portions of rhythm and melody together to create a song, notably The Flat Earth. Seen this before on YouTube, it`s old but nice to have it here as well.

There`s a bit of a problem with the extras on this disc in that invariably the dvd just stops once an extra is over rather than going back to the main menu. This is annoying but I`m a little more forgiving than I would normally be as it`s Dolby (others may not be).

Conclusion

I may have mentioned this already, but I just love The Golden Age Of Wireless. Whilst I understand an artist`s need to further themselves and pursue different directions, it`s been one of my major regrets that Thomas Dolby didn`t follow the sublime path he forged on his debut album. Maybe, just maybe, it will happen some twenty-five years later though…

This DVD was released alongside a CD of the same name as a record of the Sole Inhabitant tour, filmed as part of a day at the Berklee Performance Center (someone tell them it`s actually spelled `centre`) in Boston during September 2006. Part of this day included a workshop for music students, some of which is included in the extras here.
As a DVD, this release is poorly designed. There are occasional sound glitches and more annoyingly the extras don`t default to the main menu when finishing, instead I was treated to the blue screen I usually get when switching on my player. There is also a huge problem (for me) when playing the songs without the intros, which is a big part of this particular set. Nearly a third of Europa And The Pirate Twins is skipped in some sort of formatting/layer change error. Unforgivable, especially as this is my favourite Dolby song. Admittedly this may be my Sony player rather than the disc, but I don`t know for sure as I had a look at the Flat Earth Society forums (somewhere new to go…) and others have had similar problems.

OK, that`s the bad bit. The good bit is that this is a fantastic disc that allows fans to relive their favourite Dolby recordings in a slightly reworked fashion but still true to his synth beginnings. Dolby is clearly not playing everything, but you can watch him set up tracks by either keying in rhythms or melodies as he goes. He also has a nice big pad to hit for various drum sounds or samples. I say sounds rather than patterns as he actually taps out the pattern himself as if playing the drums rather than hitting the button once and off it goes. As with most reworkings or live performances, there are small sequences missing from the old songs, I missed them in the way that an older fan would but just having the opportunity to see this live is enough to make up for this. The spoken intros between most of the songs are interesting as Dolby connects to his quite subdued audience, some involving stories behind the songs (such as One Of Our Submarines…) or just general chat about his influence on the computer industry (t`is true…). The amazing thing is that I even found myself liking tracks like Budapest By Blimp and The Flat Earth, which I`d never really gotten into before. Still, that`s the power of the synth I guess.

As a taster to potentially new recordings, this really does whet the appetite. Let`s just pray it`s as good as this…

*note* whilst this is a R0 encoded disc, it is encoded in NTSC so make sure you can play this before you buy it. This is also only currently available from either Dolby`s own website or from US-based commercial sites.