The Flat Earth | 
 enlarge | Artist: Thomas Dolby
Label: Emd Int'l
Category: Music
List Price: $12.98
Buy New: $6.89
You Save: $6.09 (47%)
New (9) Used (13) Collectible (3) from $4.86
Rating:  30 reviews
Sales Rank: 65793
Format: Import
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
UPC: 766483133122
EAN: 0077774602822
ASIN: B000002U8E
Release Date: May 28, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW Factory Sealed - Ready to be shipped within 24 hrs from California - Average 5 workdays delivery time - Excellent customer service - Buy with confidence!
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| Tracks:
| • | Dissidents | | • | The Flat Earth | | • | Screen Kiss | | • | White City | | • | Mulu the Rain Forest | | • | I Scare Myself - Thomas Dolby, Hicks, Dan | | • | Hyperactive! |
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Album Description
1984 EMI Records release out of the U.K
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| Customer Reviews: Read 25 more reviews...
 A masterpiece March 22, 2008
What can I say, this is a great album. I am a musician that records in my home studio and I use this album as my sound reference. It's quality is fantastic. This album is Dolby's genius in high gear. I was blown away when I first heard it in the '80s and am still loving it. The haunting piano sound and style in "I Scare Myself" alone has influenced several of my musical recordings. Dolby's lyrics are powerful if not beautiful throughout. If you have time to listen to quality music- get this album.
A massively impressive and mature sophomore effort January 17, 2008
Moving on from the catchy and atmospheric but structured 3-minute pop tunes of his brilliant debut, here Dolby stretches out song lengths to experiment with looser and more fluid structures and arrangements, resulting in seven varied songs that feature a plethora of sounds, textures, and engagingly haunting melodies. Dolby employs these textures and sounds to evoke a variety of moods and settings, both lushly pastoral and edgily urban. Key to the album's success is the abundant warmth Dolby radiates with his passionate singing and soulful hooks. Over beats and rhythms that range from tensely mechanical to dreamy and free-form, layers of eerie and colorful synths etch out the melodies and provide a densely atmospheric backdrop. Figuring prominently in the mix is Matthew Seligman's tasteful, rubbery fretless bass, which slithers and snakes its way through each song, enhancing the album's unique melodicism and organically fluid feel.
Highlights include the opening "Dissidents," with its assertively mechanical beat, sharp funk guitar, slippery bass, and moody layers of synths, over which Dolby paints a grim first-person portrait of a politicized, radical writer suffocating under the censorship of an oppressive dictatorial regime; truly gripping stuff. The dreamily amorphous "Screen Kiss" offers a vine-like mesh of dizzying melodies that support Dolby's intriguing, emotionally charged stream-of-conscious imagery. Elsewhere, African high-life guitar and delicate piano melodies help lift the breezy title track into the stratosphere, while the more conventional and driving pop of"White City" could fit comfortably on Dolby's debut. "Mulu the Rain Forest," consisting of slightly jarring samples of rain forest sound-effects and some of Dolby's most impassioned singing, is the album's riskiest, most out-there experiment. "Hyperactive," the album's single, is arguably the weakest spot, yet still proves addictively manic and catchy.
Stylistically, "The Flat Earth" is not unlike albums by other like-minded 80s synth-based pioneers, like Blue Nile's "A Walk Across the Rooftops," and Japan's "Tin Drum" (not to mention David Sylvian's early solo work). All three albums, while different in notable ways, share an approach that relies heavily on mood, is dense with atmosphere, and which successfully balances stirring emotional warmth with the alternately clinical precision and colorful warmth of synths. If you're looking for more songs like "Hyperactive," you might be disappointed. But if the thought of Dolby breaking new ground with an alluring palette of textured sonics seems appealing, then I highly recommend this.
Every number a gem April 16, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
While a number of reviewers may dismiss Hyperactive, my experience with the song and the album is quite different. My first copy of The Flat Earth was a cassette pirated in Thailand. Because of the two-side logistics, Hyperactive was the first tune on side one, and Screen Kiss was the last. Dissidents opened side two and the album closed with I Scare Myself. When presented in this order, the whole album makes much more sense. Hyperactive is a killer opener. Every tune is a gem.
 TD Flat Earth October 6, 2006
Loved this CD and listen to it frequently still. It's more of a serious introspective from Mr. Dolby...so if you know him by "Blinded Me With Science" only, you won't find that quirkiness on this CD.
Complete work August 19, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
You know those albums you have? The ones where every track is good and they are just varied anough that everything sounds original? Do you have an album where you don't have to skip any tracks and like to play it completely every time? This is one of those albums.
Best songs are Dissident and The Flat Earth, but none of them suck. Probably the worst track on the album is the one that charted...Hyperactive. Buy this disc. It will end up in your regular rotation for the rest of your life.
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