Thomas Dolby Quotes

I sang in a choir when I was 10 or 11, and learned to sightread single lines, but other than that I don't have a formal education. I picked up the guitar initially, playing folk tunes – Dylan – then I graduated to piano when I got interested in jazz, listening to people like Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, and so on. The first electronic instruments started to become accessible in the mid-70s and I got my hands on a kit built synthesizer and never looked back.

I marvel at the new landscape of the music business — distribution via the Internet and recording technologies I barely dreamed of when I started out.

I have zero desire to add to the myriad of machine-based, synth-driven grooves out there.

The Net has made a music career approachable for thousands of bands — but I hear too few single-minded voices among them. What I do best is write songs, tell stories.

The new songs are organic and very personal. This album is a travelogue across three imaginary continents. In Amerikana I'm reflecting with affection on the years I spent living in the USA, and my fascination with its roots music. Urbanoia is a dark place, a little unsettling ... I'm not a city person. And in Oceanea I return to my natural home on the windswept coastline.

The Floating City is set against a dystopian vision of the 1940s that might have existed had WWII turned out a lot differently.

So evidently music was a killer app and is a killer app for computer and the Internet; it just took the tech industry a long time to hear that message.