Thomas Dolby - A Map Of The Floating City (2011)

Thomas Dolby - A Map Of The Floating City

Release date: 24 October 2011

Tracklist:
01.Nothing New Under The Sun
02.Spice Train
03.Evil Twin Brother
Thing Called Love
05.Road To Reno
06.The Toad Lickers
07.17 Hills
08.Love Is A Loaded Pistol
09.Oceanea
10.Simone
11.To The Lifeboats
12.Spice Train (radio edit)


Audio codec: MP3
Bitrate: 320 kbps
Playtime: 54:56
Size: 126 MB



A Map Of The Floating City was recorded in the Nutmeg Of Consolation, Dolbys recording studio built within a 1930s lifeboat and powered entirely by renewable energy, which is located in the garden of Dolbys beach house on Englands North Sea coast.



Review from www.avclub.com/articles/thomas-dolby-a-map-of-the-floating-city,63831/

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 Dolbys classic albums The Golden Age Of Wireless and The Flat Earth wasnt 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 1992s Astronauts & Heretics, Dolby gets back to what hes 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, Dolbys 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 weakestΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥aside from the clubby Spice Train, which marries a thumping beat to Bollywood stringsΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥and get Floating City off to a shaky start, but the Amerikana material that follows is funny, catchy, and strange, and includes the albums 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 detailsΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥what people listen to, what they drink, what they read, and what they see from behind their designer sunglassesΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥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.