Thomas Dolby will probably stick out to most of you as the “Blinded Me with Science” guy from the 80s, and a man unfortunate enough to have one of his songs featured on Howard the Duck, remembered by many as possibly the Worst Movie Ever Made. But there’s a lot about Dolby you may not know: in addition to being a regular contributor to the soundtracks of Grand Theft Auto and The Mind’s I video game series, he even developed a new downloadable file format called Rich Music Format (RMF) which improved the sound quality and quantity of sampled sounds in songs. Dolby’s started to give more attention to the science his song made him famous for: He spends most of his time devoted to his audio company, Beatnik, which is devoted to improving the quality of sound and synth technology. Plus, he dresses like a cyborg. Check out his latest and greatest hits on Red Bull Music Academy Radio.
Sorry I have to correct several pieces of misinformation contained in your piece:
1. ‘The Mind’s Eye’ (not ‘Mind’s I’) was not a video game, it was a laser disk, DVD and CD of computer animation for which I composed the soundtrack
2. Rich Music Format (RMF) is not for pro/consumer audio, it’s a mobile device file format that my company Beatnik created, and is used by Nokia and others for ringtones and user interface sounds in several billion mobile phones
3. I don’t actually most, or in fact any of my time to Beatnik Inc any more! I am living in the UK and concentrating on the TED Conference, for which I am the music director, and my own new album which should be released later in 2010
4. ‘Howard The Duck’ was pretty bad I grant you, but not the Worst Movie Ever Made by a long shot!