Thomas Dolby

"The man who never dreams, goes slowly mad."

Thomas Dolby is an award-winning English musician known for his steampunk style, his eclectic musical style, and his ability with electronic instruments. And his goggles.

Thomas Dolby (born Thomas Morgan Robertson; 14 October 1958) is an English musician and producer. Best known for his 1982 hit "She Blinded Me with Science", and 1984 single "Hyperactive!", he has also worked extensively in production and as a session musician. Robertson was born in London, England, contrary to information in early 1980s press releases that reported his birthplace as Cairo, Egypt. His father, Martin Robertson, was an internationally distinguished professor of classical Greek art and archaeology at the University of London and Oxford University, and in his youth Thomas lived or worked in France, Italy and Greece. He attended Abingdon School in 1975-76, completing his A Levels whilst there. He later married actress Kathleen Beller in 1988; the couple have three children together.

Dolby is member #00001 of the current incarnation of the Flat Earth Society, a pseudoscientific group. His best known song came from the album "The Golden Age of Wireless" (1982), frequently re-released and revision with varying tracks available - it was released five times, in fact! He has produced a variety of albums since then, along with video games based on his steampunk settings.

Thomas Dolby has also worked as a producer and a soundtrack composer for both films and video games, most notably "The Gate To The Mind's Eye", the third installment of the CGI collection, the Mind's Eye (series). Dolby also wrote the songs for the 1986 George Lucas film Howard the Duck and chose the members of the film's fictional band, Cherry Bomb. Dolby wrote and produced three tracks for the 1992 soundtrack of the animated movie Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest. He also created the score for the 1993 Sega CD interactive movie "Double Switch". Additionally, the song "Hyperactive!" is featured in the 2002 PlayStation 2 videogame Grand Theft Auto Vice City as part of the New Wave radio station Wave 103.

In 1990 Dolby played the role of the villain Stanley in the movie Rockula as well as contributing the songs "Stanely's Death Park" and "Budapest by Blimp".

In 1993, Dolby successfully established the Headspace company. Headspace developed a new downloadable file format designed specifically for Internet usage called Rich Music Format with the RMF file extension. It had the advantage of small file size like MIDI but allowed recorded sampled sounds to be included at a higher bitrate for better overall reproduction. RMF music files could be played in a browser using the free Beatnik Player plug-in. Later versions of RMF permitted artists to place an encrypted watermark in their files that were supposed to prevent unauthorized duplication. In 1999, Headspace, Inc. was renamed Beatnik, Inc., and now specializes in software synthesizers for mobile phones, which it has licensed to mobile phone manufacturers including Nokia.

While still remaining on the company board, Dolby stepped down from his position as CEO of Beatnik Inc. to pursue other technologically innovative interests, such as founding Retro Ringtones LLC in 2002, which produces the Retro Folio ringtone asset management software suite for companies involved in the mobile phone ringtone business. At the second annual Mobile Music Awards, Miami, Florida, in 2004 Retro Folio won "Best of Show" and "Best New Technology" awards.

Dolby's musical talents have also been put to use creating hundreds of digital polyphonic ringtones now found on mobile phones everywhere (including the polyphonic version of the infamous Nokia signature theme). He is often a major speaker at technology conferences such as Comdex, Websphere, and Nokia.

"Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto, you're beautiful!"
 * Album Title Drop: "Because aliens ate my Buick", spoken at the very end of "The Keys To Her Ferrari", off the album Aliens Ate My Buick.
 * Beautiful All Along: Implied about the singer's assistant during the bridge of "She Blinded Me with Science":


 * Black Sheep Hit: "She Blinded Me with Science", as much of his other work is more artsy, more techno-prog-pop with experimental touches.
 * Cameo: As a bartender in Howard the Duck.
 * Car Song: Subverted (or perverted) by "The Keys To Her Ferrari".
 * The Ditz: "Airhead" seems at first to be about one, but ends as an indictment of the cultural attitudes that encourage women to be ditzes.
 * Excited Song Title: "Hyperactive!"
 * For Science!:  "SCIENCE!" shouted repeatedly in "She Blinded Me with Science".
 * Mad Scientist: A major element of his on-stage persona.
 * Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly: Dolby tends not to worry too much about genre limitations or distinctions; he just makes music.
 * New Wave: Dolby falls to some degree within this category due to the period and some of his more pop tunes.
 * Steampunk: Dolby's sense of style usually includes goggles, whimsy, antique brass items and truly classic album covers
 * Synth Pop: Most of Dolby's songs are composed on synthesizer, and many of his live performances involve.. well.. him. And a lot of synths.
 * The Eighties: His album The Golden Age of Wireless provided one of the fundamental hits of 1982, "She Blinded Me With Science".
 * Shown Their Work: Dolby is known for making his work available on Youtube, dissecting his song concepts, explaining how he arranged tracks, and showing how he used various gadgets. From his most recent album, he here explains the idea he wanted to play with for the track 'Toadlickers', then gets into all the technical bits.