I caught the video for She Blinded Me With Science which was an enjoyable 80's romp staring Thomas and Magnus Pyke !
This inspired me to revisit his first 2 albums The Golden Age Of Wireless and The Flat Earth both of which are underrated IMO.
Thomas was a real pioneer in electro music but never quite recieved the attention/success that he deserved, with only one top twenty single and album in the UK to his credit.

It is unbelievable that she blinded me with science wasn't even a Top 40 hit. Has you said only 1 single made the Top 20 and that was Hyperactive. The quite aptly titled close but no cigar made no.22 though.

As I recall, he developed the technology for polyphonic ringtones, and made an absolute fortune from it.

I had the extended record of She Blinded Me With Science! I loved the 'B' side just as much (The Jungle Line?) He's married to Kathleen Beller (Kirby from Dynasty) isn't he?

The album where ' Close But No Cigar' came from his best album imo 'Astronauts & Heretics' and this song is my favourite of his, just love the Bruce Hornsby style piano, "I Love You Goodbye"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KYkGVZM5w4

Yes, I remember him. Good musician.

Dolby also appeared in the OTT video for "It's My Party" by Dave Stewart (not
the Eurythmics one) and Barbara Gaskin (2:30 in)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC3g0JmKceU

I loved his songs when I was a kid, especially Hyperactive! I Scare Myself and Airhead. On reflection the latter is horribly sexist but I liked it then.

I do now. Thanks for bloody reminding me

He actually bought out Jungle line as an a side under the name Low Noise in 1981. Loved the b side of that single called Urban Tribal. Still got the 12" somewhere.

'I scare myself' is one of my fave songs ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKlBPHkZpW0

Thank you! I had completely forgotten this, but it's just wonderful. Loved it so much back in the day.

I also liked his (field)work with Ryuichi Sakamoto:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBDWzhMQxVA

I can't remember his music at all, but his Wikipedia page shows that he went on to do groundbreaking work in internet music technology. He's now Homewood Professor of the Arts at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

I will be seeing him next weekend, as he's appearing at the Rewind Festival as part of British Electric Foundation

He released a concept album about a fantasy world with different countries, and launched an online, interactive game to go with it. Apparently it became a thriving community, a bit like a non-violent version of World of Warcraft.

Super-intelligent guy, his nerdy image has always been a bit of a joke, but he gives talks on music technology, marketing etc, so he's quite the intellectual.

Here's a track from his concept album, with Eddi Reader on it, about one of his 'countries', Oceanea.

Yeah, professor, that figures, he always seemed to have more upstairs than the average pop star.

I remember the first time I saw him on TV doing Windpower on Top of the Pops, he was as much a visual impact artist as a musician.

I saw him on the news a few years ago about having a transgender son/daughter.

I used to have a theory that Thomas Dolby, Howard Jones and Martin Gore (from Depeche Mode) were all in fact the same person.:-S

Dolby also produced several albums for the excellent Prefab Sprout.

Wasn't that song meant to be the Big Bang Theory theme?

lucky you .. let us know what it was like ..