Send "Thomas Dolby " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 It’s been two decades since Thomas Dolby last graced us with an album. Truthfully, it’s been hard to claim that we’ve missed him. His hits “She Blinded Me With Science” and “Hyperactive” have hardly faded from our consciousness since they first emerged in the 1980s. His two best albums, 1982’s The Golden Age of Wireless and 1984’s The Flat Earth, have continue to resonate and attract their share of new fans in the years since Dolby opted for the green pastures of Silicon Valley where he created the ringtone synthesizer and forever changed telecommunications. His prolonged absence has doubtless given him enough time that he can afford to present only the best material on A Map of the Floating City. Dividing the album into three distinct parts––Urbanoia (the dark, unsettling city), Amerikana, a meditation on Dolby’s years in the U.S. and his love of American roots music, and, finally, Oceana, a return to his own roots––Dolby has afforded listeners the opportunity to learn/remember that he’s far from a tech-driven composer. True to his vision, the opening Urbanoia is dark and filled with a kind of claustrophobic ennui via “Evil Twin Brother” (on which he receives a helping hand from Regina Spektor), a tune that accurately captures life in an age when some apparently see culpability as a liability. “Spice Train” captures the zeitgeist of ‘80s British electronic music without sounding dated or like pastiche....full text |
| Blogcritics |
| Thomas Dolby has returned with his first new studio album in almost 20 years. He withdrew from the music business in the early 1990s and spent the ensuing 15 or so years in Silicon Valley where his company, Beatnik Inc., created the ringtone synthesizer that is embedded in more than three billion mobile phones. In 2006, he re-entered the music world, moved back to his native England, and released the live album, The Sole Inhabitant. He finally returned to the studio to record A Map Of The Floating City, which will be released next month. There will be a deluxe edition that will include a second disc of instrumentals and bonus tracks. Dolby gained fame in the '80s as a part of the electronic, new wave movement, most notably with the 1983 hit single, “She Blinded Me With Science.” Albums including The Golden Age Of Wireless and The Flat Earth also achieved much commercial successful in the United States. Dolby's new release is a three-part concept album, basically a personal travelogue that follows his visions and travels across three imaginary continents named Urbanoia, Amerikana, and Oceanea. The music of each part (or continent) is distinct from the others, taking shape as respective entities. Two of the album's sections have already been made available as EP’s to members of Dolby's fan club, The Flat Earth Society. While he contributes his usual creative keyboards throughout, Dolby also features guest artists like Regina Spektor, Imogen Heap, Natalie MacMaster, Eddi Reader, and guitar virtuoso Mark Knopfler on certain tracks. His voice has matured over the past 25 years, and now resonates as a very smooth and supple instrument. "Urbanoia" has the album's darkest lyrics, which run counterpoint to music that is actually very melodic in places. It is also the section that comes closest to the artist's best-known '80s sound. With its thumping bass/drum foundation and keyboards on top, “Nothing New Under The Sun” is typical Dolby. “Spice Train” finds him experimenting with funky synthesizer sounds....full text |
| Avclub |
| During his ’80s heyday, Thomas Dolby was recognized for his technical wizardry as a performer and a producer, but he rarely got his due as a songwriter. The beauty of Dolby’s classic albums The Golden Age Of Wireless and The Flat Earth wasn’t just the way he seamlessly fused electronic and conventional pop orchestration, but the way he used those sounds to tell expansive, cinematic stories about lovers and loners hopping through time and around the globe. For his first new album since 1992’s Astronauts & Heretics, Dolby gets back to what he’s always done best: exploring imaginary environments through sound and words, and always defining them primarily by the humans who populate them. A Map Of The Floating City is compiled from three EPs: Amerikana, Dolby’s offbeat, Bacharach-esque version of roots music; Oceanea, a trio of lush, pretty ballads that sound like classic Dolby; and the more dance-oriented Urbanoia. The three songs from Urbanoia are the weakest—aside from the clubby “Spice Train,” which marries a thumping beat to Bollywood strings—and get Floating City off to a shaky start, but the Amerikana material that follows is funny, catchy, and strange, and includes the album’s most beautiful song in the epic family history “17 Hills.” Then the album ends strong with the lovely Oceanea songs, which include the bossa nova character sketch “Simone,” about an alluring world-traveler whose “iPod is looping Gipsy Kings.” Those details—what people listen to, what they drink, what they read, and what they see from behind their designer sunglasses—are what make a Thomas Dolby song more than just synthesizer riffs and dry wit. Dolby takes care to construct whole worlds, making sure there are people to talk to there, and scenery to drink in....full text |
Thomas Dolby lyrics
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