Making a rare return to the UK, the electronic artist on his ’80s recollection tour performed his classic set including from his ‘The Golden Age of Wireless’ and ‘The Flat Earth’ studio albums, interweaving in cover samples from the likes of the Police (‘Bring on the Night’) and ‘One of Our Submarines’ with Gary Numan’s ‘Cars’; the latter riding sonar waves and one of his finest pieces, a tribute to his late uncle who died in World War Two. He closed this song on a cover of The Cure’s ‘Lovesong’, which was perhaps a little surplus.
In this same vein, and for the majority of the remainder set, Dolby then previewed his ‘Iconic 80s symphony’ which was far from iconic: it consisted of multiple covers like a cheesy ‘80s DJ set, inspired by his interest in making synthesisers sound more symphonic using his favourite music from the ’80s, combining riffs and chord sequences to create symphonic motives. With his backing band of Mat Hector (drums) and Ana Pshokina (bass), the latter of whom appeared virtually on screen after being refused entry to the UK from Ukraine, the final product was a little naff.
The symphonies named Movement 2, 3 and 4 opened on his spoken word narration involving Dolby’s fictional encounter with Michael Jackson and sampled the following songs: Comfortably Numb / Here Comes the Rain Again / Red Rain / Sign Your Name / Little Red Corvette / Billie Jean / This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) / I Love You Goodbye / With or Without You; Bonnie / Libertango / New Years Day / The Killing Moon / The Things That Dreams Are Made Of / Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) / Ordinary World / Roam / All Around the World; Woke Up this Morning / White Wedding / Love Will Tear Us Apart / Dancing with Tears in My Eyes / Vienna / Don’t Dream It’s Over by the likes of Pink Floyd, Eurythmics, Peter Gabriel, Terence D’Arby, Prince, Michael Jackson, Talking Heads, Echo & the Bunnymen, the Human League, Duran Duran, Tears for Fears and the B-52s.
However, the sad and perhaps overlooked factor of this “celebrity karaoke” was that none of this was Dolby’s own material and instead of moving forward with his own music, he was choosing to regress back to nostalgia by singing and playing other artist’s songs, also not entirely in tune. His plan to calibrate this into a symphonic orchestra – which for now he was virtually conducting in another moment of cheese – next year as a holistic tribute to ’80s music is a shocking oversight and one hopes that he does not go ahead with his jukebox karaoke venture, instead focussing on writing his new tracks despite by his own admission not being a trained musician. Dolby ended his set returning to ‘The Golden Age of Wireless’, with ‘She Blinded Me with Science’ and ‘Airwaves’, although by this point these fantastic tracks by his own making were somewhat lost amongst the confusion from earlier in the set.
21/05/26: Thomas Dolby @ O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London.
Photos © Peter Tainsh.
© Ayisha Khan.