Tony Mansfield
Tony Mansfield (born 19 January 1955) is an English songwriter, musician and record producer.
Early work
Mansfield was born in Wimbledon, and became best known as the main songwriter/producer for New Musik, a synthpop band that performed from 1979 to 1982.[1] Following their debut hit single "Straight Lines" in 1979, the band had three further UK Top 40 hits in 1980 ("This World of Water", "Sanctuary" and Living By Numbers"), and released three albums: From A To B (1980), Anywhere (1981) and Warp (1982). The group also released a compilation album for the United States in 1981 known as Sanctuary which consisted of tracks from the first two albums. After the demise of GTO Records, New Musik disbanded.
Productions and collaborations
Mansfield's career as a freelance producer had begun pre-New Musik in the late 1970s, and after the demise of his band he turned exclusively to production. Mansfield became skilled in the use of the Fairlight CMI and used it extensively throughout the 1980s for production and pre-production. During this time he worked on a number of successful albums and singles for various artists in the 1980s, most notably: Naked Eyes, Captain Sensible (which included writing credits on hits such as "Glad It's All Over", "There Are More Snakes Than Ladders" and "One Christmas Catalogue"), the debut album Hunting High and Low by a-ha, XXX by Miguel Bosé, Showpeople by Mari Wilson, Bouncing off the Satellites by The B-52's,[2] Vicious Pink, Jean Paul Gaultier and After The Fire.
In the 1990s he produced the No. 1 debut album Puntos Cardinales for Ana Torroja and in 2001, Online for the Latvian band Brainstorm amongst other production works.
Other productions and collaborations include: Aztec Camera, Yukihiro Takahashi, RPM, Search Party, MC Aurra, Bernard Lavilliers, Reflex, Apache Indian/Chage & Aska, Aleisha, The 2, Silvergold, Mimori Yusa, Takafumi Sotoma, Nice Music, Yip Yip Coyote, Jean Pierre Mader, Lio, Philip Jap, Pepi Lemarr, Mike Oldfield, Adele Bertei with Robert Fripp, Duke, Rob Davis/Stan Alexander, The Rescue, Holy Jade, Ilene Barnes, The Damned, Planet Ha Ha (a band that consisted of Tony Mansfield, his brother Lee Mansfield and Naked Eyes keyboard player Rob Fisher), Claude Sabbah, PulseXPulse, Thunderclap 2, Cleaners From Venus, Martin Ansell and Najma.
Mansfield's work has featured in various television productions, advertisements and films including Earth Girls Are Easy (1988), Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997) and Hysterical Blindness (2002).
References
- ^ "New Musik". Люди (in Russian). 19 April 2004. Archived from the original on 27 January 2011.
- ^ Cullman, Brian (December 1986). "B52's: Bouncing Off the Satellites". SPIN. 2 (9). ISSN 0886-3032. Retrieved 27 January 2011.