Rewind: Philip Sherburne on “The Flat Earth” by Thomas Dolby
Finn in discussion with Philip Sherburne about “The Flat Earth” by Thomas Dolby (1984)
Why did you choose this album, and how did you come across Thomas Dolby in the first place?
Until I was 12 or 13, I got most of my pop music from Top 40 radio. There weren’t a lot of other options for kid living in suburban Portland, Oregon in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and I loved a lot of things that I’d probably cringe at now, simply because they were all that was available. This is not one of them, though. Thomas Dolby’s “The Flat Earth” has remained a personal favorite for a quarter century now, and within it I can find many of the seeds of my eventual love for electronic music. I don’t remember any first encounter with Thomas Dolby’s 1982 single “She Blinded Me With Science,” which was all over the radio that year. I’m sure it was the synths and samples that grabbed me. I had discovered synthesizers through the music shop where I bought piano sheet music – Bach, Czerny, Phil Collins – and was nuts about anything with synths in it (In 1983, I’d get one of my own, a Korg Poly-800). Curiously, I didn’t dig any further into Dolby’s music at the time, but then, the song was ubiquitous, and in retrospect, it was such an odd single it probably didn’t gesture towards a form bigger than itself, like an album. It was what it was, and that was plenty. In 1984 or 1985, I went through a brief period of checking out LPs from the Multnomah County Library. That’s where I came across „The Flat Earth“. It was the cover that got me. Around that time, I would latch onto anything that had the faintest hint of “new wave” to it, and the cover’s pseudoscientific markings and cryptic photo-montage seemed like the most modern thing I’d ever seen. In retrospect, the sleeve is hardly so dazzling — a slightly watered down version of Peter Saville. (In fact, it looks a little like a cross between the Durutti Column’s “Circuses & Bread” and Section 25’s “From the Hip”, but it lacks the elegance of either.) Still, it was good enough for a 14-year-old jonesing for the New. I remember sitting on the floor of my parents’ living room, hunched over the sleeve, trying to make sense of the whole package. Not to repeat myself, but “cryptic” is the only word that fits. Everything about the music seemed to hint at hidden meanings, from the sleeve to the lyrics: “Keith talked in alphanumerals,” after all. Who the hell was the guy panning for gold on the cover? Who were these mysterious Mulu, people of the rainforest? What was a drug cathedral, and why an octohedron? (I had so much to learn.) Etc., etc. I’ve long since stopped caring much about lyrics, much less concept albums, but I was young and impressionable then, and every flip of the record seemed to offer another clue as to some strange, grownup world I couldn’t begin to decipher. The same went for the music, of course. For starters, there was the stylistic range: “Dissidents” and “White City” were recognizable as pop music, after a fashion, but what was “Screen Kiss”? It presented a kind of liquidity I don’t remember having recognized in music before that – first in the fretless bass, the synthesizers and the stacked harmonies, and even the chord changes, but mainly it was the way it trailed off into the scratchy patter of L.A. traffic reports, multi-tracked and run through delay. I’d never heard the “real world” breaking into pop music before, and certainly not spun into such a purely “ambient” sound. “Mulu the Rain Forest” was another weird one – again, an approximation of ambient, long before I’d discover it. And “I Scare Myself” totally threw me for a loop. What was a Latin lounge jazz song doing here, especially sandwiched between the humid “Mulu” and the jagged, chromed funk of “Hyperactive”? There was no doubting the continuity of the album, but the pieces felt at odds, as fractured as the cut-up sleeve imagery; the sequencing seemed erratic and the two sides of the LP felt out of balance with each other, and yet you couldn’t have put it together any other way. Just like venturing to the edge of the (flat) earth, flipping the record had a weirdly vertiginous quality to it. (I was, you may note, an unusually impressionable adolescent, at least where music was concerned.)
At the time I got this it took some time to grow on me. Was it the same with you or was it love at first sight?
A little of both. There was definitely something off-putting about the record at first, but I devoured it anyway. I’d go so far as to say that the parts that alienated me were precisely what sent me back into it. I wanted to figure it out. All this might sound a little silly now. Today, I can recognize that a lot of it is pretty overblown, beginning with the lyrics: “My writing/ is an iron fist/ in a glove full of Vaseline”? That’s… pretty awful. (Also, it may go some way towards explaining the purplish quality of my own youthful stabs at poesy.) But for all its excesses, it kept drawing me in. I still listen to the fade out from “Dissidents” into “The Flat Earth” and feel a thrill all over again, all those gangly licks and hard-edged FM tones giving way to hushed percussion and a yielding soundfield… It’s funny, too, to listen today to the title track and even hear the tiniest hint of disco and proto-house in the rolling conga rhythms, things I had absolutely no idea about then. Whatever its failures, this was the album that, more than any other up until that time, convinced me that records offered more than just a hook and a chorus, that they deserved to be puzzled through, analyzed, unpacked. That they offered up their own little worlds, worlds I would aspire to inhabit.
Are there songs that you particularly love? Or even some that you don’t?
I don’t think I cared much for “Hyperactive” at the time – it seemed too jittery, too intense. Frankly, I’ve never loved Dolby’s voice, and much of his performance here runs counter to my usual tastes. He’s too strained, too belting. (The same goes for “White City.”) And the sonics of the thing are really rather unpleasant – all that slap bass and Chipmunk frenzy. In retrospect, though, it’s a rather astonishing song: such a weird, unstable amalgam of elements, such a jumble of sounds, and such a reflection of self-consciously “cutting-edge” studio technology of the time. Given the song’s subject matter, I guess he pretty much nailed it. Looking back, “Mulu” isn’t without its problems: namely, the whole noble savages thing (and the cod-Asian strings that open it). But I can live with that. The insect chatter, the thunderclap drums, the fretless bass, the rushing chants, the piano chords – every element gives me chills. I adore it. (Let’s not forget that my probable #1 favorite song of all time is Prince’s “Condition of the Heart,” which is excessive and absurd in much the same way.) “Dissidents” I still find an astonishing piece of recorded music. It takes so many twists and turns. There’s that teaser intro, which implies one very odd time signature before easing into a low-slung 2/4. There’s mixture of vocals – Dolby’s in the foreground, background, and everywhere else; voices of uncertain provenance sped-up and slowed-down; the foreign-language excerpts (prefacing the Conet Project and Wilco alike); the operatic snippets. And then there’s the way he constructs the beat, modeling it on the patterns of a typewriter, mirroring drum machine and typewriter samples. And I love how the song breaks the fourth wall, so to speak, when the paper’s torn from the typewriter at the track’s climax. And I could rhapsodize at length over my love for “The Flat Earth” and “Screen Kiss,” which make such a perfect one-two punch on the first side. Especially “Screen Kiss” — such quiet, expansive drama.
This album is usually viewed by critics as being more “mature” than his debut album, “The Golden Age Of Wireless”. Do you think this is true? How would you compare it to “The Flat Earth”?
„The Flat Earth“ definitely has a kind of grown-up feel to it, from the narratives to the songwriting, arrangement and production; the piano and bass give it a very self-consciously “jazzy” feel. It’s also one of the few Dolby albums not to travel under a kind of goofy, comic-book banner. I’ve always hated the mad-scientist schtick of “Blinded Me With Silence,” just as I dislike overtly “funny” elements in music in general. I’m not saying I’m right – I’m sure Chuck Eddy would disagree – but it’s just the way my ears are tuned. Dolby’s wacky, early-MTV persona does a disservice to “Wireless”, though. Behind the kitsch, there’s a darker element prefiguring the future-shock paranoia of „The Flat Earth“. Listen back to “Wireless” now, and it’s pretty sophisticated, in terms of both songwriting and production. “Europa and the Pirate Twins,” “Airwaves”… these are not the work of a one-hit wonder. Hell, “The Wreck of the Fairchild” has the audacity to throw together synth-pop, ska and foreign-language control tower transmissions: it may not be Cabaret Voltaire, but it’s not Howard Jones, either. And “One of Our Submarines” is simply a masterpiece. Talk about steampunk melancholy. “Bye bye empire, bye bye…” No wonder Ricardo Villalobos remixed it. The 21st century death of Anglo-American world dominance is spelled out right there.
This mad scientist pose Dolby often used (up to this day) is not very prominent here, apart from “Hyperactive”. And the humorous elements are toned down, too. What do you think made him decide for that? And why did he neglect it again for his later work?
Honestly, I don’t know. I’d love to hear that there was more music where this album came from, rather than the mad scientist’s lair.
Apparently Thomas Dolby managed to develop his own signature sound in the genre of Synthpop, nevertheless it seems to me that he tried to open up his spectrum a bit wider with this album. What noticeable influences would you point out?
I don’t really think of „The Flat Earth“ as a synth-pop album. Aside from some of the pads, the synthesizers tend not to be that prominent in the first place. There’s definitely an electro-funk underpinning; there are bits of George Clinton in “Dissidents.” Brian Eno’s atmospherics inform the overall texture of everything – something I’ve always liked about the album is the way that foreground (melody, riff, figure) bleeds into background (synth pads, delay, atmospherics) and vice versa; that’s gotta be an Eno thing. Roxy Music – “More Than This” has the same gooey, gliding sound that Dolby goes for. Bowie, a little, in the approach to space. A faint hint of Talking Heads in “The Flat Earth.” (This is all, now that I think of it, Eno-related.) I get a Trevor Horn vibe from a lot of it. Listen to “The White City” alongside something like Propaganda’s “A Secret Wish “ (1985) – there are the same loping, “ethnic” rhythms; the same synth washes, trumpets, portentous lyrics… even slap bass! Both records have that coked-to-the-gills sheen, a sound I’ve always loved.
Thomas Dolby also extended his ideas successfully as producer, with quite a broad range from Whodini, Adele Bertei to Prefab Sprout and Ryuichi Sakamoto. I think there are significant similarities between his solo and production work. Would you agree?
You know, I don’t really know much about his production work. Listening now to Whodini’s “Magic’s Wand,” though, you can certainly hear Dolby’s touch. It’s not a lot less goofy than Dolby’s own material, but funky tends to eclipse funny. (It’s interesting to imagine how we might think of him if he had been a streetwise black American instead of a nerdy white Brit; would we be calling “She Blinded Me With Science” an example of Afro-futurism?). In his 1981 production for Jane Kennaway’s “Year 2000″ (downloadable here: http://offtherecord-mikeyten.blogspot.com/2009/07/rip-it-up-friday-jane-kennaway.html), you can hear Dolby all over it, even though it’s ostensibly a guitar-pop song. There’s that ambient synth intro (shades of Legowelt!). And the first four bars of the chorus, which do an interesting little modulation thing, remind me a lot of the vocal harmonies on “One of Our Submarines.” Then you also have the voiceover in the breakdown, “Even superheroes have their feelings…” – classic Dolby style, sort of mock-psychoanalysis-in-dub. With the Group’s, “Technology” (1983), he even sowed the seeds of Justice’ D.A.N.C.E.!
I always found it peculiar that a British electronic musician with somewhat limited pop appeal managed to plant his ideas to early electro, disco-funk and other established pop acts. Apart from being classics, like “Magic’s Wand” or “Steve McQueen”, how Dolby are those productions?
On “Magic’s Wand,” I couldn’t really say how much Dolby is cribbing from existing electro-funk and how much is his own invention, but that bass synth definitely sounds like it comes from his playbook. And while “Steve McQueen” sounds less immediately Dolby, if only for its country/blues touches that open the record, I hear Dolby’s touch in the sense of space – everything’s quite porous and cushioned – and in the details, like the little filigree of ambient guitar in “Bonny,” or the vocal samples (Fairlight?) on “Appetite.” I actually didn’t know this record before… thanks for the tip!
In my opinion Thomas Dolby is also a very original lyricist. How would you describe his way with words?
The lyrics to „The Flat Earth“ totally pulled me in when I first encountered the album. (These days, I could really care less about most lyrics – I suspect that one of the major things that drew me to electronic music was that I could finally escape all that feeble emoting that pop and rock so often entail.) I don’t want to overstate my case, though: I don’t think Dolby is necessarily a great lyricist. There are some real clunkers on the album: “Courting disaster we ran in the night/ Wings of an angel torn in flight.” (It’s times like these you actually wish they hadn’t included lyric sheets in albums.) But he does have a way with words. “Miller time at the bar where all the English meet.” That line has always stuck out for me (Who thought that the phrase “Miller time” could ever sound almost poetic?). Oddly, on this album, if you just read the lyrics on the page, they can look pretty dreadful. But he really makes them work in action – those rat-a-tat typewriters have forever impressed themselves on the word “dissidents” for me. Even at his purplest, maybe there’s something to be said for the way he collides images together. In “Dissidents,” you get writing, insects, palm, domino effect, iron, glove, vaseline, fuse, and kerosene all in the space of a few bars. That supercharged jumble fits perfectly with music that’s stuffed with isolated timbres and carefully mismatched sounds, music that feels almost collaged together.
Is there any later work of him that you like? I remember him suddenly popping up on the German electronic label Salz a few years back.
I pretty much lost track of Dolby after „The Flat Earth“. Which is odd, because I used to be pretty obsessive about the artists I really cared about. I think my tastes changed pretty rapidly around the same time I discovered the album: new wave and goth and punk and hardcore came tumbling in by 1985. My tastes narrowed, in a way – I lost my taste for studio experiments; I wanted raw and loud and dark. It wouldn’t be until 1994 or so that I started listening to “electronic” music again, Aphex Twin and Autechre and Biosphere and Sun Electric, all things that „The Flat Earth“ and New Order unknowingly primed for me. But what I have heard of Dolby’s later stuff doesn’t appeal much. “Aliens Ate My Buick” – the title alone was enough to put me off forever. And while I can hear interesting ideas lurking in a track like “Pulp Culture,” the music generally doesn’t push my buttons (If I want George Clinton, I’ll listen to George Clinton). Whatever magic happened to make „The Flat Earth“ seems to have been fleeting. Most people call Dolby a one-hit wonder, but I suspect he may be a one-album wonder. And that’s no slight. Those “One of Our Submarines” remixes are an old favorite of mine, though. I couldn’t believe it when I first stumbled across the record—at Sónar, I think it was, in the record fair. Ricardo Villalobos and Akufen remixing one of my favorite Thomas Dolby songs? It seemed too good to be true. I still think that’s one of Ricardo’s best remixes.
Thomas Dolby also works as an actor and film composer. Did you follow that streak of his career?
I have not. Looking at his filmography on IMDB, it actually appears that I’ve never seen a single film he soundtracked. Not even “Howard the Duck”. I do, however, recommend this video:
It’s Thomas Dolby at a NYC storytellers’ night, recounting a tale of visiting Michael Jackson’s home in 1982. There are limousines, thrones, and the immortal question: “What’s the deal with the kids on the balcony?”
He is still touring quite a lot, and has released some live albums in the past few years. I found it a bit surprising that this live aspect is so important to him. Have you had the chance to see him live?
I never have, and to be honest, it’s not something that appeals to me too much. I like recorded music. I’m most interested in what can be done in a studio that can’t be done on stage, in real time, with fallible hands. I suspect that „The Flat Earth“, in fact, played a significant role in tilting my tastes in that very direction. So to experience the music live… there’s such a risk of letdown, isn’t there?
Philip Sherburne is an American music critic who writes for The Wire, Pitchfork and other publications. Formerly based in Barcelona, he relocated to Berlin in September, 2008.
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Great to go through your videos given above. Your blog is really nice and works as an adviser, I look forward to your new links and articles.
An interesting aspect of this Internet era is that an artist can respond directly and publicly to a music critic. When \’The Flat Earth\’ came out I was never able to do that. Many critics didn\’t \’get\’ the album at the time–they\’d either already written me off as a serious artist due to the commercial success of \’She Blinded Me With Science\’ and paid no attention to TFE; or they loved \’Science\’ and \’The Golden Age Of Wireless\’ but were confused that TFE sounded so different. The trendy pose for music critics in 1983 (especially UK mags like NME) was to slag off 99% of all music, while championing some obscure underground indie band from Inverness that had already split up. Any compliments were back-handed, and praise was given grudgingly. (There\’s a strong element of this in Philip\’s critique as well!) But in 1983 the artists destroyed in their pages had no ability to respond, defend themselves, or even set the record straight when facts were wrong. Today I can reply directly to Philip, and unless my reply is censored, the public will get to read my comments. And of course, I\’m one of the first to read this piece, because I have a Google search set up that emails me whenever someone writes about me…. How vain is that? Still, this is a first for me. I\’m responding not because I was upset by the review–far from it!–but because I saw this box beckoning, and my dinner\’s in the microwave.
Firstly, Philip, it\’s a rare joy to read a review of The Flat Earth that is articulate, thoughtful, and grammatically correct. I feel standards have generally slipped in the Web age now that there are fewer checks and balances in place, no editor to supervise. Writers tend to publish whatever they like, without checking facts: they know that if anyone complains, they can always correct the article and avoid repercussions. So it\’s great to read such a well written piece, and one which doesn\’t pull any punches. There are many in-depth reviews and comments on my own Forum at thomasdolby.com, but they tend to be gushing tributes without much objectivity.
I\’m happy and relieved that you like The Flat Earth as a whole despite what you see as its lack of continuity and many lyrical flaws. You\’re clearly a music fan and musicology student, with a wide knowledge that lets you correctly pinpoint my own influences, and enough musicality to talk about synth pads, time signatures and production styles. It\’s good that Finn brought Prefab Sprout\’s \’Steve McQueen\’ to your attention, as any review of my work from the period would be incomplete without taking that album into account. I put almost as much love and care into it as I did with TFE, and the two albums will always belong together. After those albums, both Paddy McAloon and myself took a vacation from the more serious, intense stuff, and made an album that was more commercial and tongue-in-cheek: \’Aliens Ate My Buick\’ for me, and \’From Langley Park To Memphis\’ for Prefab. I understand that these would not have been to your taste–you say my title alone was enough to put you off. But when you lost track of my work after TFE, you missed out on a couple of great ones, Prefab\’s \’Jordan: The Comeback\’ (1990) and my own \’Astronauts And Heretics\’ (1992). In both cases those albums resumed where their early 80s counterparts had left off. By that stage of our careers, each of us had lost a little innocence, perhaps, but had gained something in wordly wisdom, in substance over style.
I\’ve never understood how a novelist can get away with picking a different era or geographic location in which to set his story, and invent a new set of characters with each book, while a recording artist is expected to adhere to the convenient label that was assigned him when his previous work was released. It has always upset people that my albums have spanned a lot of different musical styles. Why couldn\’t I just stay in the same bucket, album after album? Must be something suspicious about that. Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa and invented the helicopter, Spielberg released Schindler\’s List and Jurassic Park in the same year, but god forbid a punk band goes folky, or an Emo band goes Goth. Is this because audiences are so inflexible they will only tolerate one narrow style of music? No. It\’s because the Music Industry–led by journalists and radio programmers–prefer the convenience of a barcode on each artist designating their genre. When the barcode doesn\’t scan correctly, they can point out how the artist is trying desperately to recapture the magic of the legendary Second Album (which, incidentally, the mag slagged of as well at the time.)
There are several points you make that made me smile, because like a lot of music criticism, they\’re so utterly pointless! To say for example \’if I want George Clinton, I\’ll listen to George Clinton\’ you might as well skip George as well and go straight to James Brown, or write off James and go to New Orleans marching bands, or discount them and go out to the cotton fields, back to the African plains, down into the crater of Ngorogoro and so forth, in an endless search for the pure source. In reality, what makes music interesting is that it evolves and grows when an artist internalises and processes his/her influences but innovates a new mode of expression. So many column inches are taken up comparing one artist to another–often for the lack of anything constructive to say–that if being influenced by his heroes automatically rendered an artist worthless, there would be no sense in reviewing music at all. I think you basically agree with this, hence the reference to Prince\’s \’Condition of the Heart\’ which is one of my all-time favourite songs too. I\’m only too proud to have His Purpleness as a major influence, along with the others you nailed, Bowie, Eno, T.Heads etc. And to your credit you\’ve never accused me of plagiarism, which would have been unjust. Thank you for recognising the collage-like nature of the sounds and flavours of The Flat Earth, which are certainly diverse, but all of which emanated primarily from my own cranium.
I\’ve cringed in the past at being referred to as a \’one-hit wonder\’. Does the public really think about musicians in these terms? It\’s like using vague generic labels to pigeon-hole a record, passing judgement without actually passing on any information. A bit like seeing someone at a party and saying \’oh my god, did you see what she was wearing?\’ At least you were diplomatic enough to call me a \’one-album wonder\’ instead: but I have to say that makes me cringe too. For a start, the tracks you like came from album #2 TFE and album #1 GAOW as well (\’Submarines\’). Next, you\’ve never heard \’Astronauts and Heretics,\’ which includes some of my best songs ever including \’I Love You Goodbye\’ and \’I Live In A Suitcase\’–which, after the raucous interlude of the \’Aliens\’ album, fall far more back in line with the moodiness of your TFE faves such as \’Screen Kiss\’.
And lastly, I\’m still alive and kicking, and mid-way through recording an album which I passionately believe will top The Flat Earth and be my best ever.
So in summary, I enjoyed your review and I\’m flattered you picked my album from 27 years ago to single out as a significant one in your life. And I don\’t want to hold you responsible for the sins of some of your fellow music journalists. But you often seem to fall into the same traps as your colleagues–it\’s just too easy to apply the same bogus criteria when judging quality in music. This is not your fault, it\’s just the way your vocation is. And that\’s why ultimately I\’m really glad I\’m a musician, not a music critic. There\’s a clear need for great music in the world, and though mine is just a drop in the bucket, at least it\’s completely unique. Every day, succeed or fail, I\’m able to pursue the dream of making wonderful music that will light up someone\’s life. It\’s not so clear why there is a need for music criticism, or if it achieves anything at all. And so I\’ll end with a message to you Philip and Finn, and all music journalists out there. You have to get up every day and go to your job as a music critic, knowing you are basically powerless either to pay tribute the music you love, discourage the bands you hate, or even alter the entrenched, unchanging world of music criticism. It must be a thankless existence, and you have my sympathy. That\’s off my chest, I\’ll shut up now
Hello Mr. Dolby,
first of all thank you for replying to this “discussion” of your album. I agree that the internet age means that artists can respond directly to their critics and fans, but that one actually does is quite the exception (for various reasons).
The main idea why I thought up this feature series was to pin down how people I like think about music, and in my opinion that is best done when you discuss music that really matters to them.
I was quite glad Philip chose “The Flat Earth”, because it, as the album before, also holds a special place for me, that I enjoyed revisiting very much.
But talking about THAT record in your life also means that you apply different criteria than you would if you wrote a regular review. It is much more subjective, and as it is about a certain point in an artist’s development, it also means that it is in favour of a particular musical stage of the artist’s career over other musical stages. It is a glimpse, not the whole picture.
And it is a feature concept which is as much about the interviewee, as it is about the music selected. In that aspect, I like this particular interview a whole lot, because it reveals a lot both ways. And with your response, it reveals even more.
Actually, I would love to have more of the artists in question responding to these interviews, although I highly doubt they will. But this piece did already help to raise more deserved attention to “The Flat Earth”, and subsequently your other work, too, as I highly doubt any reader of this will be of the same opinion as Philip or me, and most will decide to make their own opinion (and here the ways of the internet help, too).
As for me, I’m curious about your new album, and I’m sure I will enjoy it as much as other of your music.
Thanks again and Best Greetings,
Finn
[A second attempt, let's see if the website lets me publish this time.]
Thomas,
Thanks so much for your considered and considerate response. I’m not sure where to begin – obviously flattered, because I think for a music journo there are few pleasures greater than knowing that an artist has actually read one’s writing about him or her. And I’m immensely grateful for the thought and cordiality of your reply. It’s wonderful to read a response untainted by the absolute lack of decorum that plagues most online discourse. (Perhaps you could found a finishing school for wayward pop stars? I’m sure Kanye could benefit.)
I’m also glad you called me out on a few points. I was using “one-hit wonder” as a kind of shorthand, strawmannish term, and certainly one that I don’t believe should be attached to you — but “one-album wonder” was a cheap shot, and an unjustified one, given my unfamiliarity with the bulk of your later work. (To be honest, I think that mainly I was feeling clever, an affliction from which I suffer all too often.) Interestingly, another reader wrote to recommend “Astronauts and Heretics” shortly after the piece published. Thus chastened, I will make haste to check it out.
I don’t mean to descend into too much point-by-point response here, but a few things:
Perhaps I didn’t express myself well, but TFE’s “lack of continuity” is actually one of the things I love about it. Around the same time, there were plenty of albums that I loved precisely for their monochromatic feel and unity of mood (the Cure’s “Pornography,” for instance). In fact, I think it’s safe to say that I’ve generally tended to gravitate towards albums with a strongly cohesive feel. But TFE’s all-over-the-placeness is one of the things that makes it a truly great album, in my eyes. It keeps you guessing and forces you to engage with it on its own terms. It’s also never schizophrenic, never simply eclectic for the sake of eclecticism. (Re: “Hyperactive,” it’s funny, because I remember not being terribly fond of that song at the time, or even in the intervening years, but since spending a considerable amount of time with the album while writing this piece, I’ve come around to it in a big way — I woke up with the song in my head just a few mornings ago, in fact, and shortly thereafter was struck by the idea that you basically invented Basement Jaxx with that track, a rather neat trick!) When I describe the album having a curiously unbalanced feel, that’s a good thing in my book. I can’t help but think that TFE would have turned out a very different album if it had been recorded in the era of the CD. That tension between the two sides of the LP is one of the things that give the record its curious character.
(An aside: TFE is actually one of the few albums I’ve owned on all three formats. After the library experience, I bought the cassette; years later, I re-purchased it on CD, and in the past few years I’ve made a habit of snapping up the wax whenever I can find it cheap and in good condition. I think I currently have three copies, between my apartment in Berlin and my mother’s basement in Oregon.)
I really like your comment about the different standards to which musicians are held, compared to authors, filmmakers, etc. I don’t know the answer. I don’t think it’s necessarily reducible to a top-down formulation that blames the Music Industry (caps yours!) and barcodes. Musical fandom is a curious thing, fraught with emotion and prejudice. I suspect that the immediacy and viscerality of the listener’s response has a lot to do with it. For a certain kind of listener, anyway, albums are like a drug, and once they’ve discovered an artist that evokes a certain response, they want to keep getting that same fix; they feel duped when subsequent albums don’t give the same reaction as the first. The great artist, I suppose, works around this game of “managing expectations.” But yes, labels and journos certainly bear some responsibility here. And it just gets worse, with more music available than ever before, and less time for anyone to digest it.
Which leads into your broader question about the role of music journalism. Again, I don’t really have the answer. For professional reasons, I’d like to think that music journalists and critics do serve a role by at least exposing potential listeners to new music (the old “consumer guide” theory), and potentially suggesting new ways of thinking about it, helping advance a discourse that enhances, or at least subtly colors, our experience of the music. (Let’s also be grateful to Web 2.0 and Google Alerts for making this conversation possible!) But I also won’t pretend that the whole shebang doesn’t try my patience and even my faith, at times. And as a semi-amateur (that sounds more accurate than “semi-pro”) DJ and occasional producer of my own music, I’m certainly sympathetic to artists’ frustrations. Though in my case I would have been happy for even some off-the-mark reviews, I think. It feels much worse when your work simply disappears into the void.
But I digress. Mainly I just want to thank you for taking the time to write. And I truly look forward to hearing what you’re working on now. Should you ever need liner notes… (I kid, I kid.)
All the best,
Philip
Thank you all for a fascinating web discussion of a favourite Artist and Album. I hope this kind of interchange becomes a common and regular feature as the insights are so very entertaining, thought provoking and at the very least have led me to reacquaint myself with other TD productions and some of the other influences you have cited. Just a thought… it would wonderful to read about Astronauts & Heretics in the same vein. yours hoping – PPMW
Wow. Without a doubt, one of the finest things I\’ve had the pleasure of reading since the internet\’s introduction. In my opinion – TGAOW/TFE are both masterpieces. I really cannot decide between the two, it changes from day to day. With that being said, I have to agree with Mr. Dolby; CHECK OUT ASTRONAUTS & HERETICS! It is jawdropping in its emotional impact. Seriously, it\’s a roller coaster ride of the heart which never fails to bring me close to tears with its ending (and rather odd) line of \
*continued from above, don’t ask*…
“I’m sinking like a frog on a leaf”. Simply stunning.
“And as a semi-amateur (that sounds more accurate than “semi-pro”) DJ and occasional producer of my own music, I’m certainly sympathetic to artists’ frustrations. Though in my case I would have been happy for even some off-the-mark reviews, I think. It feels much worse when your work simply disappears into the void.”
As an amateur ambient/electronic musician myself, these words ring so true for me as well. I would love to hear some of your stuff, got a link?
I could have written the exact review were I as eloquent. I was a kid stranded in the musical gulag of suburban DC in the early 1980\’s when butt-rock was the dominant FM paradigm, until I discovered WHFS in Bethesda, MD, and with it New Order, Eno, Costello, the Comsat Angels. I pretty much dismissed Golden Age based on Science as well (much like Nada Surf and Popular) until I was working late one night at the movie theatre and my buddy had Cloudburst booming through the PA. The rest is history.
Mr. Sherburne, I would be curious to know your reaction to some more selective listening from Aliens and onward. As much as my musical tastes have wandered and evolved, I can still listen to Budapest By Blimp and become seized with a child\’s sense of wonder at it\’s imagery, and the closing words of Cloudburst at Shingle Street become more poignant with every passing year. Astronauts and Heretics was the soundtrack to my medical internship year.
Mr. Dolby, thank-you for being such a grand part of my life and for remaining so accessible and involved in the world to this day. This was a wonderful review, well-written and a great and respectful exchange.
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