I just watched my autographed copy of the Thomas Dolby Sole Inhabitant DVD. It was very cool. It was filmed at the Berklee College of Music during his tour last year. He came through Atlanta and I missed it but I picked up the DVD and it did not disappoint.
Thomas did the entire tour as a one man show. He had a MAC G5 running Logic Pro Audio driving most everything. He used two hardware synths made by Novation as well as an old Roland analog synth. For keyboards, he mainly used controllers with the keys split into ranges with different sounds mapped to different parts of the keyboard. He also had a M-Audio Trigger Finger for doing drums and triggering samples. A Muse Receptor was in his rack to control all the effects on his voice.
The performance was very good. There were a few places where he wavered off key a bit but who cares... It was Thomas Dolby live for the first time since the 90s. Plus he had a lot going on with managing all the hardware and software. The audio on the disc is very good as well except there were some noticeable volume changes probably due to the fact the Dolby was tweaking the mix from the stage. He also made use of the real-time video along with canned clips and software that was written for v-jaying. The creator of the video software served as his VJ for the tour.
The set list included his big hits like "She Blinded Me With Science" and "Hyperactive" but I thought the high points, at least for me. were "Living in a Suitcase" and my personal favorite "One of Our Submarines".
I got the DVD from CD Baby. He has a limited few that are signed. Mine is number 383/1000.
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