Right place, right time – a satisfying explanation for the careers of many engineers and producers. In the case of Ken Thomas, things are a little more complicated. The engineer and producer worked at a number of leading studios, including Trident and Advision, that exposed him to mainstream, radio-friendly artists like Queen and Rush; but, quite quickly, he became one of the favoured studio men for the industrial and experimental scenes.
Thomas worked with some of the biggest icons of the alternative music scene, including Martin Hannett and Martin Rushent, which didn’t hurt his credibility one bit. His roster of artists includes Wire, Moby, Modern English, Bush Tetras, Yann Tiersen, Maps, Psychic TV, Sigur Rós, Cocteau Twins, and Lemon Kittens. The link is his willingness to explore sounds outside of the normal commercial range. Record companies itching for hits might have sought out other producers, but artists found their way to Thomas when they could.
Thomas died in 2021, leaving behind a legacy of recordings that few can rival.
10. Ken Thomas – Beat the Light
Thomas only released one album of his own music. This 1980 set fit neatly into the evolving post-punk sound of the time. It combines traces of funk with reverb experiments in ways reminiscent of Cabaret Voltaire, along with the kind of sonic waterboarding that wouldn’t be out of place at a Throbbing Gristle show.
10. 23 Skidoo – The Gospel Comes to New Guinea
23 Skidoo were North London creative kids who made music when they weren’t skateboarding. They explored different sounds, from gamelan to electro, but the most striking of their recordings was the collection for Fetish called Seven Songs. Wrapped in a Neville Brody sleeve, it combined grooves and exotic instrumentation with industrial music techniques.
This track, which is the stand-out song from the album, was produced by Thomas together with Cabaret Voltaire, whose Western Works studio was used for the recording. Stephen Mallinder of CV recalls:
Cabaret Voltaire played quite a few shows with Skidoo and I’d personally gotten to know them well through Neville Brody and the TG collective prior to my going into the studio with them and Ken Thomas. They were capturing that moment better than any other band, a real collision of modern and tribal that somehow worked more effectively in the pre-digital period, more organic, everything cutting and folding, made for the 12 inch format. Everyone was breaking the anchors of analogue, using instruments and studio equipment pretty loosely, but they were very focused on what elements worked and what they wanted. It was a full contingent with pretty fluid roles for everyone. Ken was perfect for getting that across with structure but without diluting that live dynamic. I just remember they were always long sessions over a few days, much fun with brief breaks for a bit of sleep and breakfasts back at my old gothic house that seemed as anarchically organised as the studio sessions.
9. Test Dept/Brith Gof – Gododdin
There came a period in the history of Test Dept that the radical metal-bashers discovered The Spectacle. Together with the Welsh avant-garde theatre company, Brith Gof, they staged a piece in 1989 based on the destruction of a band of Celt warriors.
It was a politically-charged recording. As Test Dept explain in their own words:
Using the poem Y Gododdin as inspiration, the earliest poem in the Welsh language, it tells the fate of 300 Celtic warriors who set out to defend their homeland from 100,000 invading Angles around 600 A.D. They are only remembered through the survival of one epic poem. Defeat is never to be cherished but the glorious rendering of their account against an infinetely stronger enemy lessens the smugness of victory and lends dignity in retrospect to the vanquished. Culture then as now becomes a tool for survival. There is nothing marginal about the issues at stake. The right to self determination, the growth and celebration of native language, looking back further than ‘pop’culture; making huge visions concrete and breathing life back into characterswho, like so many were destroyed when a race first began to flex their colonial muscles. The intention of the performance was to reaffirm the energy, optimism, and dynamism of the last great flowering of Celtic Society.
8. Clock DVA – Uncertain
The first Clock DVA album, released at the opening of 1981, was a dark beast. Unlike the Futurists who were emerging at the time, they wore black leather jackets and dabbled in heroin. It took Dave Gahan (who tapped Thomas to work on his first solo album) a decade to get to the same place, but by then Clock DVA had been stripped back to Adi Newton and an alternative electro aesthetic. Thirst was made by a conventional rock band who didn’t want to make rock music. With Thomas’ help, they accomplished their goal.
7. Cocteau Twins – Aikea-Guinea
The Scottish band were looking for new directions after their self-produced album, Treasure. The Cocteaus were in great form, and almost bloody-minded in their disregard for the charts. Despite cracking the Top 40, Simon Raymonde described Treasure as the group’s “worst album by a mile.”
The band reconvened at Jacob’s Farm with Thomas on the desk. The result was an EP that represented progression while playing with song structures. It was a template that an Icelandic act were soon to show an interest in.
6. Psychic TV – Godstar
Genesis P-Orridge’s first post-Throbbing Gristle project brought him to Thomas for the recording of this signature song. Alex Fergusson from ATV wrote the instrumentation and Rose McDowall contributed, but P-Orridge’s lyrics hinting at the murder of Brian Jones were captivating.
Did the Rolling Stones spend much time worrying that Psychic TV had uncovered a grand conspiracy? We doubt it, but P-Orridge was given to fanciful tales: he claimed that ghostly traces of Jones appeared on the tapes for this track after he held a seance in the studio.
5. Sigur Rós – Hoppipolla
Thomas was introduced to Iceland’s answer to the Cocteau Twins by Thor Eldon from The Sugarcubes, whose first album he had mixed. Thomas saw the band live and pitched to work with them on their next recordings. He stayed for multiple albums – Agaetis Byrjun, (), Glósóli, and Takk – and helped them to realise their sound.
4. Malaria! – Gewissen
Founded by Gudrun Gut and Bettina Köster, Malaria! was one of a succession of M! bands that subverted expectations in German post-punk and pop. This early track was co-produced by Thomas and Mark Reeder.
3. Wire – I Should Have Known Better
There isn’t another band like Wire. There are hundreds of imitators, but the unique combination of personalities has given the band its own tension and tenacity. At the time that Thomas engineered the recording of this song, they were in their genius art-rock guise with Bruce Gilbert on guitar. It is one of the times that bassist Graham Lewis took vocal duties, in a swipe at an encounter with a narcissist. They are out there.
2. Maps – Built to Last
James Chapman’s Maps project involved Thomas as the mixing engineer, alone and with his son. This track from Vicissitude has a futuristic dynamism.
1. William Orbit and Polly Scattergood – Colours Colliding
For his comeback album, The Painter, William Orbit reached out to a number of artists to collaborate. Both Ken and Jolyon Thomas had roles on this track, which also features a production credit for Daniel Miller.