Professor Dolby and the Hyperactive Science of Embracing the Family Business

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It would be interesting to make a Venn diagram marking the overlap of musical artists who are considered both “cult favorites” and “one-hit wonders”. It might be even more interesting to hear how those performers feel about these labels. Even when it's applied accurately, the latter carries an undertone of dismissive-ness, while the former can be seen as devaluing the successes that they've achieved. Superficial considerations aside, one such artist for whom neither label seems quite appropriate is Thomas Dolby.

This was readily apparent from Dolby's appearance at the recent Intervention7 convention in Maryland. Taking place not far from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he’s currently a member of the faculty, Intervention is an annual celebration of the creative arts with a tangible lean towards technology and science-fiction media. Dolby fit the event perfectly - and not just because of his acumen with synthesizers and having watched Doctor Who as far back as 1964. His presentation, which was followed by an enjoyable Q&A and punctuated by a trio of musical performances, was equal parts autobiography and case study in adapting one's talents to a changing cultural environment.

Though he directed the audience to his upcoming memoir The Speed of Sound for anecdotes such as his performance with David Bowie at Live-Aid, Dolby offered plenty of background about his early days in the music business. The stories about working with late-70s and early-80s synthesizer technology were particularly entertaining for anyone whose musical tastes were informed by that era's pop music. Many of his later endeavors have been somewhat removed from that world, but this phase clearly informed much of what came after. Understanding that he developed the visual concept for the hit “She Blinded Me with Science” before coming up with a song that fit it so perfectly makes it clear that he's not enslaved to conventional approaches.

The same commitment to following his own path led him to step back from music and start his own Silicon Valley tech company, Beatnik, in the early-90s. Not surprisingly, they focused on the technical challenges of delivering music online as the "dot-com era" took shape. The work with Beatnik in turn led to him working with Nokia in the early 2000s where he worked on one of contemporary life's most ubiquitous examples of digital technology, the mobile phone ring-tone. 

Not one to outstay his welcome in any endeavor, a move to England's East Anglia region several years ago dovetailed with a return to making music, albeit with a different mindset than his 1980s work. Dolby had arguably been among the first to understand that the music business as it had been when he started out was fading in both relevance and substance. At the very least, he understood the shift better than those within the industry who, as he described it, couldn't understand why so many consumers were reluctant to pay $0.99 for an actual song but willing to spend double that for a low-quality excerpt in the form of a ring-tone. Rather than just releasing a traditional album, he decided on an approach to presenting new music that was a more natural fit for a media environment dominated by social networking and gaming.

Set in a post-apocalyptic alternate history, the game A Map of the Floating City unfolded over three months in 2011. While the effectiveness of its resolution was apparently undercut by a technical mistake on Dolby's part, he seemed genuinely proud of both the game, which fostered significant player interaction within the narrative, and the music that accompanied it. Recorded on his boat-based studio (names the Nutmeg of Consolation. the varied collection of songs makes it plain that his musical curiosity is undiminished. Among the highlights is “Spice Train”, a song characterized by a slinky groove and some nice use of found sound that he performed at Intervention.

The through-line for Dolby's public life has been that each step is very different while still connecting to what's come before. This holds true for his entry into what he calls “the family business”. Both the son and grandson of Cambridge professors, he was appointed Johns Hopkins University’s' first Homewood Professor of the Arts in 2014. Since then, he's taught classes about sound in film and generally worked to make the university's film program more focused on the practical aspects of film-making. To his credit, he's also pushed for more outreach to local schools in Baltimore whose students often don't have access to arts instruction due to funding constraints. 

For anyone wondering - yes, he played both “She Blinded Me with Science” and “Hyperactive”. If Dolby has any ambivalence about the likelihood that he'll be remembered for these pleasingly off-beat favorites, it didn't show in his performance. Self-deprecating at times and incisive at others, though never lacking for wry observations, Professor Thomas Dolby is a forward-looking artist who doesn't mind a bit of looking back.