Reclusive solo artist Thomas Dolby is preparing to break his 20-year silence with a brand new studio album, A Map of the Floating City, due out this summer. But first, on March 28, Thomas is releasing Oceanea, a three-track EP filled with soaring melodies, intriguing storytelling and vividly cinematic textures. Featuring guest vocals by Eddi Reader, Oceanea sees a return to Dolby’s melodic and atmospheric roots. “The new songs are organic and very personal,” explains Dolby. “The songs on Oceanea are a reflection of my natural home on the windswept English coastline.” These days he writes and records aboard a solar and wind-powered 1930s lifeboat in the garden of his beach house in East Anglia.
Now living back in his native U.K. after 25 successful years in the U.S., Dolby is busy completing A Map of the Floating City, which features appearances by special guest artists Mark Knopfler, Regina Spektor, Eddi Reader, Natalie MacMaster, Bruce Woolley and Imogen Heap. Says Thomas, “This album does not sound electronic at all. I have zero desire to add to the myriad of machine-based, synth-driven grooves out there. What I do best is write songs, tell stories.”
Thomas Dolby’s impressive recording and production career now stretches over 30 years. His commercial breakthrough came with the 1982 release of his very first album, The Golden Age of Wireless, which featured the hit “She Blinded Me With Science.” Go back a year and Dolby’s innovative synthesizer work was already making its mark: Foreigner’s massive hit single “Waiting for a Girl Like You” with its weaving synth intro — Dolby’s work. Cue 1983 and Thomas Dolby is guesting on Def Leppard’s Pyromania album. In the same year he appears as producer for U.S. rap wonders Whodini, who release an absolute B Boy classic with “Magic’s Wand.” 1984 saw the release of Dolby’s second album, the expansive masterwork The Flat Earth, which alongside Talk Talk’s Colour of Spring (1986) raised the artistic bar considerably. The Flat Earth featured Dolby’s biggest single success, “Hyperactive!,” a fine piece of pop-art funk that was originally written for Michael Jackson. (It still sounds like the eccentric English cousin of Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit.”) The 12” released in the U.K. on the collectable Parlophone Odeon label is treasured amongst beat-head DJs.
From 1985-1992, Thomas Dolby released two more albums — collaborating with George Clinton on the bold Aliens Ate My Buick and 1991’s Astronauts and Heretics, which featured Grateful Dead supremo Jerry Garcia alongside Siouxsie and the Banshees’ Budgie. In addition to his solo output, Dolby produced Prefab Sprout (the classic Prefab albums Steve McQueen and Jordan: The Comeback), Joni Mitchell (Dog Eat Dog), appeared with David Bowie at Live Aid, was part of the all-star cast in Roger Waters’ 1990 “The Wall: Live in Berlin” concert, and performed at the Grammys® with Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock.
Dolby quit the music business in the early ’90s and spent many years in Silicon Valley, where he founded tech company Beatnik Inc. and co-invented the polyphonic ringtone synthesizer embedded in more than two billion Nokia mobile phones. In 2001 he became Musical Director of the TED Conference, an annual event in Long Beach, California that attracts some of the world’s foremost thinkers, inventors, and speakers. In this capacity he provides live musical introductions to sessions, sometimes with an eclectic TED House Band, as well as helping secure guest musicians and entertainers for the event. At last year’s conference, Dolby was joined onstage by David Byrne for an inspiring performance of Talking Heads’ “(Nothing But) Flowers.”
Following his involvement in Beatnik Inc., Dolby returned to his musical career and the live arena in 2006. Dates in the U.S., an appearance at O2 in Hyde Park, and a triumphant night at London’s Scala reaffirmed this performer’s importance on the big stage. A 2007 appearance at America’s SXSW festival was followed by a string of further U.K. shows and in 2009 EMI released The Singular Thomas Dolby, which brought together all of Thomas’s great singles on one ace compilation. In 2010 Dolby released Amerikana, a download-only EP exclusive to his online community, The Flat Earth Society. A particular highlight is the richly atmospheric “17 Hills” featuring some virtuoso guitar from Mark Knopfler. Along with Oceanea, these EPs help consolidate Dolby’s fanatical online fan base while previewing music from his upcoming album.
Thomas Dolby has created a further way for fans to get early access to his new material in the shape of an extraordinary social network-based game, The Floating City, to be launched this spring via Facebook, Twitter, and The Flat Earth Society. By building a post-apocalyptic, barter-based trading culture around the objects and places named in Dolby’s songs, solving puzzles related to his lyrics, and discovering clues embedded in unique remixes, players will be able to win a sneak peek of other new songs from the album, as well tickets for a private one-off concert this Summer at which he will perform the new album in its entirety.
The five-time Grammy®-nominated British artist quit the music business in the early ’90s and spent many years in Silicon Valley, where his tech company Beatnik Inc. created the ringtone synthesizer embedded in more than three billion mobile phones shipped by Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and others. Now retired from Beatnik, 
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In a crowded playing field of music festivals, Hoxeyville activates the environmentalist in everyone at the event by implementing an incentive based program where all festival goers are encouraged to do ‘green acts’ on the grounds, a continuation of the festival’s pure intentions. The ‘Hoxeyville High Five’ has attendees competing for various festival prizes, upgrades and signed artist gear by doing such conscious clean up actions as using a compost bin or picking up trash.
On April 20, eTown welcomes legendary artist 
This newly formed team are the creative minds behind hits like “Mami”, “Rica y Apretadita”, Por ti baby”, “Shhhhh”, “No tengo dinero” and many other international hits and came together after the recent rupture of the Kumbia All Starz (formerly known as Kumbia Kingz). It is said that necessity is the mother of invention and in the eyes of these talented artists and their innovative producers it was necessary to bring back the genre with new faces, new beats and a whole re-invention to electrify their public. When asked why they chose the name ‘La Formula’ as the name of their new band, they responded “Because putting us together was like a secret formula for great music and a new twist on the Kumbia-Pop genre”. Most recently the group was selected to perform at the prestigious SXSW Festival at the Barbella Patio Stage on Saturday, March 19th and will be performing at the Latin Billboard Conference. Together, they have sold over 20 million copies and have toured through the US, Central and South America as well as performed in major events including Premios Lo Nuestro, Latin Billboards and many more.
Heavyweight Dub Champion
Nathan Moore will support ALO on ten West Coast dates during their 5th annual Tour d’Amour in February. The tour will begin on February 9 in San Luis Obispo, include a headline appearance on February 16 in Arcata, CA and conclude on February 20 in Crystal Bay, NV. Moore has also left a week open on his West Coast schedule for a spontaneous Hippy Fiasco Rides Again run. Moore envisioned the concept last summer where he takes requests from fans to play living rooms, backyards, parks or "anywhere interesting," as word spreads about the unannounced performances through social media. Fans can request shows at Moore's website (
AfroZep is a collective of Chicago musicians that assemble a few times a year to tour- performing a set of all Led Zeppelin tunes but re-done in the style of Afrobeat and Afropop. Some tunes are straight mash-ups of Fela Kuti and Zeppelin; others are Zep tunes but set to original grooves based off the music of artists such as Tinariwen, Thomas Mapfumo and Franco; and others are stripped down arrangements with tons of added traditional African drumming, like their take on 'When the Levee Breaks' which incorporates a rhythm of Malinke decent, called Soli. Arrangements such as this show how the roots of Plant and Page's songwriting can be traced even further back to the roots of blues music itself. The members of AfroZep have toured and recorded with various artists, such as: Chicago Afrobeat Project, 56 Hope Road, Starrunner, 1000 Vertical Feet, the Motet, Seneke West African Drum and Dance Ensemble, among many other of gospel, big band, jazz, rock and drumming ensembles based out of Chicago. Due to the rigorous schedules of its performers, the Afro-Zep is not a full time project and the band only tours a few times a year. With their first tour taking place in Nov 2009 the band has already traveled to Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Missouri, Kansas and Colorado.
Stockholm Syndrome