L.S Media Rating **** Stars
Thomas Dolby has never really been a man who let convention get in the way of anything he wanted to achieve or put out for his fans to take part in. From the start of the new wave of keyboard and synthesised music explosion Thomas Dolby was there messing around with the rules and defying expectation with ground breaking music such as She Blinded Me With Science and the 1984 hit Hyperactive, both these songs still sounding deliciously odd but with a certain wonderment to them.
Roll forward nearly 20 years since Thomas Dolby released Astronauts and Heretics, which reached a very credible 35 in the album charts and up against the sea change away from the genre that Thomas Dolby was one of the leading exponents of, he is back with an album that is quite unexpected and lovingly serene that it’s impossible to think of the two ends of the spectrum that makes up his career as by the same people.
Map of the Floating City is an album that has come together from two recently released E.P.s and from the bizarre but utterly challenging Floating City game. It’s a mix of songs that can be viewed of differing entities but that when combined make a genuinely appealing album which has its roots the love of word play and imagery that can only come from a mind that’s so in tune with his surroundings and reasoning. There can be very few artists outside Frank Zappa for instance that may have come up with a song title of Toad Lickers and yet give it the mass appeal of setting it to a faux country tune. There is genius and then there is Thomas Dolby.
The album opens with the songs from Urbonoia, a collection of songs that have at their core, a need to sit down and really soak up the story that Thomas Dolby is trying to get across and wonder how it can be that someone can weave together a song as Evil Twin Brother and the wonderful Spice Train can be missing for so long from the popular scene. It also benefits from stunning guest appearances, especially Mark Knopfler on lead guitar on the song 17 Hills; it seems Thomas Dolby can coax one more great tune from everybody in pursuit of something beautiful.
Ian D. Hall